Central Statistical Office (United Kingdom)

The Central Statistical Office (CSO) was a British government department charged with the collection and publication of economic statistics for the United Kingdom. It preceded the Office for National Statistics.

During the Second World War, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill directed the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Edward Bridges (later Lord Bridges), to advise him on how a central statistical office could be created in the Prime Minister's office in order to consolidate and issue authoritative working statistics. Following consideration, a formal announcement was made to establish the CSO on 27 January 1941 with the purpose of handling the descriptive statistics required for the war effort and developing national income accounts. Shortly afterward, Harry Campion (later Sir Harry Campion), a member of the Central Economic Information Service in the Cabinet Office, was appointed director. After the war there was an expansion in the work of official statisticians resulting from the aim of managing the economy through controlling government income and expenditure using an integrated system of national accounts and in 1962, comprehensive financial statistics were published for the first time.

Following Sir Harry Campion's retirement in March 1967, Claus Moser (now Lord Moser), a professor of statistics at the London School of Economics, was appointed director. Moser had the task of implementing proposals made by the House of Commons Estimates Committee in 1966, including the setting up of the Business Statistics Office to provide a centralised system of obtaining information from industry and the Office for Population, Censuses and Surveys to collect information from individuals and households through programmes of censuses, surveys and registers. He made major improvements in the area of social statistics in close partnership with the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and paid particular attention to the development of the CSO's role of co-ordinating the statistical activities of individual government departments and the development of the Government Statistical Service (GSS), of which he became the head in 1968. After eleven years of statistical development and reorganisation, Moser resigned on 1 August 1978. The third director of the CSO was John Boreham (later Sir John Boreham), Moser's deputy.

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