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Outcome Indicator Framework

Table of contents

Introduction and aim

The government published the 25 Year Environment Plan in January 2018 setting out goals for improving the environment in England. A commitment was made to develop a comprehensive set of indicators to measure environmental change. These indicators help us to show how the environment is changing over time. This will support the assessment of policies and other interventions, including how we are delivering on international and domestic commitments. In particular, the Outcome Indicator Framework can support the statutory cycle of monitoring, planning and reporting on progress in improving the environment as established by the Environment Act, (2021).

The first Outcome Indicator Framework report: ‘Measuring environmental change: Outcome Indicator Framework for the 25 Year Environment Plan’, was published in May 2019. Drawing on advice from a wide range of experts and stakeholders, it presented 66 indicators to give a comprehensive view of the environment and how it is changing. The 2019 report set out in detail the purpose of the Outcome Indicator Framework and examples of how the indicators can be used.

The Outcome Indicator Framework has an important role in our longer-term understanding of the effectiveness of policies and interventions. The indicators are a systematic means of monitoring environmental change, recognising that complex natural and social systems will respond to change on a range of timescales.

The Outcome Indicator Framework will:

Structure

Outcome indicators are:

The 66 indicators are arranged into 10 broad themes. These are topics that people will generally recognise as relating to different aspects of the environment (for example, air, water, seas and estuaries, and wildlife). Some indicators may be applicable to one or more themes but have been allocated to just one of them. The 25 Year Environment Plan goals and targets relevant to each indicator are detailed within each of their descriptions.

The inclusion of 66 indicators in the framework provides a comprehensive and systematic means to observe and convey environmental change. However, for some purposes it may not be necessary to examine this large number of indicators. Therefore, in the framework we identify a sub-set of the indicators under 16 headlines; these are highlighted in the individual indicator pages of this dashboard. The headline indicators relate to key aspects of the environment which are a focus of policy intervention and should make intuitive sense to a wide range of readers. When complete, the framework will present a large amount of information and so we will highlight key indicators under headlines to provide a way to simplify this information and provide clear communication.

Further examples on how the headlines and indicators may be used are given in Section B of the 2019 Outcome Indicator Framework report.

Using the framework

The Outcome Indicator Framework is designed to be adaptable for multiple uses. For example, it can be used to communicate environmental change or to support management of natural capital. By presenting a wide variety of data in a single location, the framework enables a comprehensive approach to analysis of environmental issues and decision making.

The concept of natural capital was used to develop the framework. Natural capital is defined as the elements of the environment which provide valuable goods and services to people such as clean air, clean water, food, and recreation. A natural capital approach is advocated by the 25 Year Environment Plan as it accounts for all the different ways the environment benefits society and so can inform better decision making. A natural capital framework sets out the need to:

The 66 outcome indicators can be considered as either a measure of (a) the drivers or pressures on natural capital assets, (b) the extent or condition of natural capital assets or (c) the services or benefits associated with natural capital assets. This classification is not always straightforward since the condition of one natural capital asset (for example, air quality) may place a pressure on another (for example, wildlife habitat).

It is important to recognise that multiple interactions occur across the indicators and categories. By classifying these indicators in this way, we can also show which direction of change in the indicator reflects an improvement to the environment (that is a downward trend for pressures and an upward trend for the condition of an asset or the provision of a benefit).

This structure is flexible, and indicators can be selected as appropriate to the needs of a particular analysis; several examples of how the indicators may be used to examine specific questions are provided in our 2019 Outcome Indicator Framework report. Monitoring and evaluation of these indicators can inform appropriate actions with an ultimate goal of maximising a healthy environment, economy and society.

The indicators that can be considered drivers or pressures on natural capital assets are:

The indicators that can be considered extent or condition of natural capital assets are:

The indicators that can be considered services or benefits associated with natural capital assets are:

Latest annual update

This 2024 version of the dashboard includes data on environmental trends for 65 of the 66 outcome indicators spanning across the 10 themes in the Outcome Indicator Framework.

In this dashboard we update trends for 44 of the indicators reported in 2023, reflecting the most recent available data. Wherever appropriate, when indicators are updated the entire time series is updated to reflect methodological refinements and this can sometimes result in changes to the historic data reported in previous iterations of the dashboard. Of the indicators reported in 2023, 12 have not been updated as no new data were available for inclusion in the 2024 dashboard at the time of analysis. This year’s update also includes data for 9 additional indicators newly reported in 2024:

Four of the indicators presented in this 2024 update to the dashboard are classified as 'official statistics in development':

These indicators are being published at source as official statistics in development in order to facilitate user involvement in their development – information on how the data have been obtained and how the indicators have been prepared is available via the links in the individual indicator pages of this dashboard. We would welcome any feedback, particularly on the usefulness and value of these statistics, via 25YEPindicators@defra.gov.uk.

Of the 65 indicators presented, 43 are described as interim indicators. Interim indicators are those where further development is expected to extend or improve the reporting of the indicator. Reporting interim indicators means that we can communicate data where they are available, whilst recognising that further development is necessary for the indicator to be complete. Examples of circumstances under which an indicator is considered to be interim include: data need to be extracted for England from a UK wide dataset, additional data need to be added to the indicator, or the methods used for deriving an indicator are expected to be further developed. The specific reason why an indicator is currently presented as interim is described in the individual indicator pages of this dashboard. Indicators are described as ‘final’ when no further significant development is immediately expected, notwithstanding the future development of the framework as a whole.

One indicator, E7: Healthy Soils remains in development. Detail on progress made in the development of this indicator, including a link to a progress report which includes emerging findings can be found on the indicator page.

A limited number of changes have been made to the indicator descriptions over the last year. These reflect feedback as well as further consideration and development of the indicators to ensure the most appropriate data are presented.

There have been some specific changes to individual indicators after further consideration of their intended purpose, in order to better reflect alignment with 25 Year Environment Plan commitments and to deliver the insights required to support associated policy needs.

A methodological change has been made to C1: Clean Seas: Marine Litter, to incorporate the latest data on beach litter on English beaches, produced for Defra by the Marine Conservation Society.

There has been a change to the short description of C2: Seabed subject to high pressure from human activity to reflect changes to the name of the associated Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic (OSPAR) indicator, which forms the basis of C2.

Changes have been made to C4: Diverse seas: condition of seafloor habitats to improve accessibility. These include an additional chart which summarises the existing regional sea assessment results for the 4 habitats included in C4 and tabulated results. There has also been a slight change to the short description to provide additional clarity.

New Good Environmental Status assessments published via the OSPAR Quality Status Report in 2023 have been included in C5: Diverse Seas: Status of pelagic habitats. These replace an older, narrative-only version of the indicator.

A new composite ‘all-species’ index has replaced the birds, butterflies and bats trends previously presented in D4: Relative abundance and/or distribution of species, and references to ‘widespread species’ have been removed from the title and short description to better align with the species represented in this new indicator of species abundance in England. The new index currently presents 2 smoothed trends, one based on a greater degree of smoothing and one based on a lesser degree of smoothing. This approach will be refined over time.

An additional chart has been added to D5: Conservation status of our native species. This new chart (component D5ii) presents a summary by extinction risk category of the same data used to create the Red List Index for England that was presented in component D5i for the first time in the 2023 update. The new chart shows the percentage of species in the Red List Index for England that are classified as falling into each of the main extinction risk categories, together with the percentage considered to be threatened.

A new composite ‘priority-species’ index has replaced the abundance index previously presented in D6: Relative abundance and distribution of priority species in England, but the existing distribution index remains unchanged. The new index is based on a subset of the data used in D4: Relative abundance and/or distribution of species, and it uses the same methodology so currently, it also presents 2 smoothed trends.

Data on the volume of agricultural production and the volume of inputs used in agricultural production (from indicators E2: Volume of agricultural production and E3: Volume of inputs used in agricultural production, respectively) have been added to the chart for E4: Efficiency of agricultural production measured by Total Factor Productivity to aid interpretation; however, there have been no changes to the methodology used to prepare this indicator.

A new indicator with multiple components has been included for the first time this year to report on G1: Changes in landscape and waterscape character. The short description for this indicator has been edited to better reflect the content of the new components and proposed future developments.

The short descriptions for 2 of the indicators within the Resilience theme have both had adjustments based upon their continued development and new datasets included within each of them as they are published for the first time this year. F1: Disruption or unwanted impacts from flooding or coastal erosion, has been adjusted to better reflect the data that has now been included. Similarly, within F2: Communities resilient to flooding and coastal erosion, the short description has been updated to include a definition of resilience to flooding and coastal erosion, of which this indicator is tracking.

New statistics on residual wastes have been included in J4: Residual waste arising by type and sector. Both a measure of residual waste production per capita, and the total produced in England are presented, and a new category on wastes sent outside the UK for energy recovery is now included.

A small change has been made to the short description of J5: Prevent harmful chemicals from being recycled following its inclusion in the Outcome Indicator Framework for the first time.

Assessment

A new assessment section was added for the first time to the 2022 update of the Outcome Indicator Framework report and dashboard, to help with interpreting results, to allow for easier comparison across indicators and to enable the production of additional summary statistics. This section has been updated in the 2024 version of the dashboard for indicators where new data were available.

Consistent categories of change for different time periods have been assigned to all indicators which are already published in a suitable format and with sufficient historic data to enable analysis. Indicator-specific results with a supporting narrative are provided for each indicator within the relevant indicator specific pages of this dashboard.

Where data are available for individual indicators, an assessment of environmental change since 2018 has been undertaken, to reflect progress made since the publication of the 25 Year Environment Plan. However, it is important to note that for most indicators, the currently available time series of data points since 2018 does not yet allow for anything more than an early indication of likely change. It is expected that the ongoing annual updates of the Outcome Indicator Framework will in time allow for statistically robust assessment of changes since 2018. This will require more than 5 data points in a given indicator’s time series since 2018 to minimise the impact of year-to-year fluctuations which make it difficult to interpret a clear trend. For this reason, care should be taken to not overinterpret offered assessments for the ‘since 2018’ category, as this is not felt to be as robust an assessment as the other categories which have more datapoints informing their analysis. It is also important to note that time lags exist in the environmental responses to interventions. It is expected that the majority of outcome indicators will require longer-term reporting (greater than 5 years) before they may be considered as showing response to policy and other actions.

There are important considerations to be aware of when interpreting results. These are highlighted in the assessment background section of this dashboard, a new addition which also provides more detail on the aims of the assessment and the methodology employed. The assessment results section presents summaries of assessment results by each 25 Year Environment Plan Goal. These summaries help to interpret how much change has been observed across goals and include information on potential links between indicators for different goals to indicate where there may be knock on effects.

Future development

Currently, some indicators are not yet available to report their full intended scope, and further research is required to determine the most suitable data and methods for analysis. We expect additional indicator data to be reported in future updates.

The technologies for monitoring and assessing change in the environment are advancing rapidly and offer new cost-effective methods (for example, Earth Observations, DNA methods, citizen science / mobile apps and new sensor technologies). We will look to update indicators to reflect these developments when appropriate but will ensure the environmental parameters used for reporting indicators are consistent and so retain the trend time-series where possible.

The Outcome Indicator Framework will be kept under regular review so that it continues to be relevant and provide the best and most cost-effective ways of assessing progress. In 2023, the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP23) was published as an update to the 25 Year Environment Plan. The Outcome Indicator Framework was custom-designed to describe environmental change as relevant to the 10 overarching goals of government’s inaugural 25 Year Environment Plan. EIP23 constitutes a refreshed update to the 25 Year Environment Plan and the continuation of the original 10 goals means the Outcome Indicator Framework remains an authoritative depiction of how the environment is changing. The Outcome Indicator Framework has always been intended to remain dynamic to best capitalise on new data opportunities and will be regularly reviewed for optimisation, which will also consider ongoing alignment with new fine-grain EIP23 policy detail and statutory environment act targets.

Further research into new potential assessment approaches is ongoing to build on the initial assessment of change analyses introduced in 2022. This work will consider appropriate statistical techniques and timeframes, and in future years, it may focus on the indicator headlines and their corresponding indicators. Where possible, a baseline near to 2018 (to align with the publication of the 25 Year Environment Plan) will be used as a reference point to assess change. Longer-term (historic) trends will also be presented for comparison where these data are available. Where suitable time-series are available, we will also assess medium-term and short-term trends.