Conducting a qualitative review of UK water statistics and data

Key Placement Information

Closing Date
Friday 12th June 2026

Start Date
Summer 2026

Duration
3-months (or part-time equivalent)

Full-time or Part-time
Full-time preferred

In Person, Online or Hybrid
Hybrid

Job Sector
Public

Project Areas
Review, Stakeholder Engagement, Reporting

How to Apply
Submit a CV, cover letter and the ESRC funding permission form signed by the researcher, primary supervisor and the WRDTP Manager (grant holder)

Applicant Eligibility
This opportunity is only accepting applications from Postgraduate Researchers who began receiving ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) funding in or after Autumn 2024 to undertake a Research in Practice (RinP) placement as part of their studentship.

Project Description

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is the independent regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority, which is a non-ministerial government department.
OSR provides independent regulation of all official statistics produced in the UK. As regulators, it is their role to support public confidence in statistics and their use by government, by addressing harms and making sure that statistics serve the public good.

This placement will support OSR’s systemic review of UK water statistics, a high-profile programme of regulatory work examining how statistics and data on water quality, pollution and usage are produced, used and compared across the four UK nations.

During the placement, the researcher will:

• Conduct a qualitative, structured, desk-based review of UK water statistics and data, covering: water quality, pollution, resources, usage, abstraction and leakage, to identify the key UK water statistics and data producers, data flows, and the available statistics and data publications.
• Analyse the key differences associated with different UK water monitoring regimes, including their coverage, methods, quality and the publication practices across the UK, with a focus on quality, comparability and identifying evidence gaps.
• Research the relevant water policy, operational and regulatory context in each UK nation to identify key user needs and policy themes of relevance to the water statistics and data landscape.
• Apply the comparability framework referenced OSR’s recent work on the adequacy of comparable UK data to a selection key UK water statistics and data on common topics nations to highlight the extent of comparability between them.
• Engage with some key stakeholders including UK water statistics producers, gaining exposure to regulatory and policy processes.
• Translate complex technical material into a clear report for non-academic audiences and an accessible visual summary of the UK’s water statistics landscape.

Please note this opportunity has been advertised across multiple Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs).