Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department uses Office for National Statistics estimates of personal wellbeing in formulating policy; and what policies his Department has introduced to improve personal well-being in the last 12 months.

We use Office for National Statistics (ONS) wellbeing statistics to inform Health and Wellbeing policy within the Civil Service. The Department also measures personal wellbeing through the annual Civil Service People Survey using the same national statistics that the ONS use for the UK population as a whole.

The four personal well-being questions are: Life Satisfaction, Worthwhile, Happiness, and Anxiety. Further details can be found at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/july2017tojune2018.

We make use of a wide range of data and evidence in developing our policies, including data sources which focus on well-being. This includes the above estimates of personal wellbeing, as well as our own surveys and data collection tools which include questions and data which are highly relevant to the well being agenda such as the English Housing Survey and English Indices of Deprivation. We also continue to use and support the development of the wider evidence base on well-being, as we are one of the HMG funders of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing.