Guardianship under the Mental Health Act 1983, England - 2021-22, 2022-23 & 2023-24

This chapter constitutes a background data quality report. For more specific information about the quality of the latest years’ data see the Data Quality Key Information section in the Introduction and Key Points chapter.

This data quality statement will provide users with an evidence-based assessment of the quality of the data used in the Guardianship publication, reporting against the nine European Statistical System (ESS) quality dimensions and principles appropriate to this output.

In doing so, this meets our obligation to comply with the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) Code of Practice for Official Statistics, particularly Principle Q3.1 which states that  ”Statistics should be produced to a level of quality that meets users’ needs. The strengths and limitations of the statistics and data should be considered in relation to different uses, and clearly explained alongside the statistics.”

The degree to which a statistical product meets user needs in terms of content and coverage.

The purpose of the Guardianship publication is to inform government in their role to monitor the impact of social care policy and practice.

The information can also be used by others such as researchers and journalists looking at mental health law, charitable organisations, service users and the public to hold local authorities and the government to account.

NHS England launched a consultation in January 2021 to identify potential users and ask them a series of questions to determine the future of the data collection and publication. After carefully weighing up the responses we decided to continue with the data collection in the same form. Whilst the majority or responders supported the proposal to cease the collection, we acknowledged the counter-view that it remains important to continue the data collection and publication in order to provide an accurate national position on Guardianship and use of the MHA, which would not be otherwise available.

The difference between an estimated value and the true value.

NHS England process all submissions following the mandated submission deadline and conduct an assessment against the previous years’ return to ensure continuity of open cases. Local authorities then had an opportunity to amend and resubmit their data and add any supporting commentary if they wished to before the second and final deadline. Senior sign-off is required before local authorities can make their final submission to indicate the data has been subject to full quality assurance.

NHS England works with local authorities to resolve any residual issues, to ensure that the data submitted reflects as accurate a picture of activity in the period as possible. In some instances, this was not possible before the final data submission deadline; any data issues that were unresolved are noted in the Data Quality Key Information Section.

In previous years revisions to past data has been allowed, although the number of revisions was small. This is no longer in place.

There is a hierarchical governance structure overseeing the data collection: Data Delivery Action Group recommends any data collection or methodology changes, and then these go to the Data and Outcomes Board for senior stakeholder approval.

The collection was sent to all 153 local authorities and responses were mandatory, regardless of whether the local authority had any Guardianship cases in the reporting period. Returns were received from 145 of the 153 local authorities, including Nil returns (which are acceptable).  

For information on how the missing local authorities were handled please see the Data Quality Key Information section.

Timeliness describes the time between the date of publication and the date to which the data refer. Punctuality describes the time between the actual publication and the planned publication of a statistic.

This report contains data for multiple financial years covering the period 1 April to 31 March. The publication is released several months after the final submission deadline when local authorities provide the data to NHS England, following data processing, analysis and validation.

The release is in line with updated pre-announced publication dates.

Accessibility describes the ease with which users can access data.

This publication is available from the NHS England website and consists of data tables (including statistics by local authority) in Microsoft Excel format, reference documents in html format and a web-based Power BI limited comparator tool.

This year we have implemented many of the Government Statistical Service recommendations on improving accessibility of spreadsheets for users with disabilities. This guidance aims to help producers of government statistics and analysis meet the UK accessibility regulations for public sector websites.

Reuse of our data is subject to conditions outlined here: Terms and conditions - NHS England Digital

Clarity describes the quality and sufficiency of metadata, illustrations and accompanying advice.

A list of the data items collected together with their definitions can be found in the guidance notes for the data collection at: 2023/24 collection materials .

The documents under the Guardianship section of the list can be used to identify what data have been collected from local authorities and to understand the terminology used within reporting outputs.

We have also recently introduced a Data Dictionary for all Adult Social Care data collections, to improve the quality and coherence of metadata used by the data providers. This is in a beta phase currently and feedback is welcomed.

Coherence is the degree to which data derived from different sources or methods, but that refers to the same topic, is similar.

There are no other nationally published sources of data on Guardianship with which these data could be compared. Data is sourced from each local authority in England and compiled at national level by NHS England.

Comparability is the degree to which data can be compared over time and domain, for example, geographic level.

The timeseries for data on Guardianship under the MHA goes back to 2003-04. In that time local authorities and regions have remained largely the same, although there have been some instances of local authorities changing boundaries or merging. These are reflected in the outputs from the relevant year onwards.

Publications from previous years can be found at: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/guardianship-under-the-mental-health-act-1983

Throughout the history of the data collection, the data items collected have remained static. The main issue affecting comparability is the fact that in previous years revisions to past data has been allowed, although the number of revisions was small. For data from 01 April 2018 this is no longer in place.

In earlier publications, comparisons have been made for duration of Guardianship cases by region and type of local authority using the mean duration. However, as local authorities have an increasingly small number of cases, any individual cases of unusual length can skew the mean figures. Therefore from 2013-14 onwards we have used median values. This should be noted when comparing to earlier reports where the mean value was used.

As mentioned in the Data Quality Key Information section, a number of local authorities did not provide a data return for the latest collection covering 2021-2024 so this should be taken into account when comparing data over time and by region.

Trade-offs are the extent to which different aspects of quality are balanced against each other.

In order to balance aspects of data quality two data submission periods are made available for local authorities. Support was made available to those local authorities who submitted by the first deadline, in order to give data providers the opportunity to address any issues found. Local authorities were able to make updates to their data during this validation period. After the second submission period the dataset is then finalized. Any issues remaining are noted in the data quality information published, but no attempt is made to amend the data.

The processes for finding out about users and uses, and their views on the statistical products.

The content of the 2013-14 Guardianship collection was determined as a result of a review of the NHS England adult social care data collections which began in 2010. The review considered changes in the delivery of social care and looked into what information should be provided to monitor the most important current and future priorities. With the approval of the then Department of Health (DH), the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and other key stakeholder organisation, including the Association of the Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), no changes were made to the Guardianship data collection.

A Working Group was established in early 2014. The aim of the group is to manage the development of the Guardianship data collection to reflect the requirements of users and policy. The Group included representatives from NHS Digital (as was), Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), Care Quality Commission (CQC), NHS England, MIND and regional representatives from local authorities. 

In 2014 the Guardianship report was subject to an assessment from the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) who regularly reviews the status of current National Statistics to ensure they maintain a high level of quality and continue to meet the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The following improvements were required and implemented as a result of the UKSA assessment:

• Provide detailed information about the quality and reliability of the statistics in Guardianship in relation to the range of potential uses.
• Determine the appropriate scale of assurance and documentation required for the administrative data used in Guardianship based on pragmatic and proportionate judgement about the quality of the data and the public interest profile of the statistics and communicate this requirement to data suppliers.
• Publish an appropriate level of detail to inform users about the quality assurance and audit arrangements for the administrative data.

The monitoring assessment report was published in October 2014 here.    

The Statistics Authority judged that the statistics covered by the Guardianship report were readily accessible, produced according to sound methods and managed impartially and objectively in the public interest and as such confirmed the statistics published in Guardianship are designated as National Statistics.

In January 2021 NHS England held a consultation to establish the continuing need for the data collection and publication. This was considered to be a successful consultation, with higher levels of user engagement than was anticipated.

We are always interested in knowing if the Guardianship collection is meeting your needs. If you would like to make any comments or share feedback with us, please contact us via e-mail or telephone:

The Guardianship collection is mandated for all local authorities. The data collection process used in this publication is subject to assurance by the Data Alliance Partnership Board. This is to ensure that data collections do not duplicate other collections, minimise the cost to all parties and have a specific use for the data collected.

The burden of the Guardianship collection is assessed and approved every three years, the burden of any changes to the collection would be similarly assessed, to ensure that they do not create undue burden for local authorities.

All statistics are subject to a standard NHS England risk assessment prior to issue. The risk assessment considers the sensitivity of the data and whether any of the reporting products may disclose information about specific individuals. Methods of disclosure control are discussed, and the most appropriate methods implemented. As a result of this process, all statistics associated with this data collection have been rounded to the nearest multiple of five, and values of 1 and 2 have been suppressed in tables where necessary.

NHS England aims to be transparent in all its activities. A description of the collection process and any issues with the quality of the Guardianship data are documented in the publication.

Guardianship data are submitted to NHS England through a secure electronic file transfer system called SDCS. The submitted files are transferred from SDCS and stored on a secure network with restricted access folders. Only a limited number of analysts are granted access to the Guardianship folders.

Please see links below for more information about related NHS England policies:

Statistical Governance Policy

Freedom of Information Process

Data Access Request Service