The annual Wellbeing of Wales report was published on 26 September 2024. The report provides an update on wellbeing in Wales to help us assess whether we are making progress against the seven national well-being goals set out in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The report considers progress against the 50 national indicators, alongside a range of other relevant data. The report is a key accountability mechanism, to be transparent about the progress Wales is making towards its well-being goals.

As in 2023, an easy read report has been published in addition to the main report to help ensure everyone is able to access statistical information about Wales.

Last year, we published a separate report on ethnicity and wellbeing, alongside the main Wellbeing of Wales report, following a report on children and wellbeing the year before. We are committed to producing supplementary reports alongside the main report where there is a clear user need to do so. However, this year we focussed on other ways of improving how we communicate progress towards the well-being goals.

A new way of communicating progress

As we approach the 10 year anniversary of the Well-being of Future Generations Act, we have considered how we can continue to provide new insight and improved ways of communicating progress towards the well-being goals. Building on feedback from users, this year we are experimenting with a new way of showing progress, focusing on the 17 national milestones. The milestones are generational targets which describe the pace and scale of change needed in key areas under the seven well-being goals. We have looked at the data for each milestone since 2015, which was when the Well-being of Future Generations Act came into force, and assessed whether the trend has been improving or not since that date.

Some of the 17 milestones have multiple parts to them, so in total we made 21 assessments of progress. 10 of these showed an improvement since 2015, suggesting that Wales is heading in the right direction towards the milestone. However in some cases, even though the trend may be moving in the right direction, we will need to move faster to reach the target by 2050. 5 milestones showed a deterioration, 5 showed little or no change, and for one milestone progress couldn’t be assessed because there was only one year of data. In most cases, the milestones continued to follow a longer term trend that was established before 2015.

You can read more about the approach we have taken in the national milestones chapter of the Well-being of Wales report. As this is a new way of presenting this information, we are keen to hear your feedback on whether this helps you understand progress towards the well-being goals. Please send your feedback to Highpriorityprojects.stats@gov.wales.

The Well-being of Wales page contains links to all previous Well-being of Wales reports, as well as data used in the reports, quality information, and national indicators.

The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is a world-first in legislating for sustainable development and codifying long-term thinking as a sustainable behaviour within Welsh law. The legal framework provides a lens for decision-makers to steer, frame and challenge the decisions being made for citizens in Wales today with the aim of helping ensure a positive legacy is left for future generations.

Following a year-long research project investigating the use of futures and foresight practices across the Welsh Government, the Sustainable Futures Division is pleased to publish Dr Laura De Vito’s report Foresight for sustainable development and well-being governance in Wales.

The report includes results from a series of pilot projects designed to improve futures and foresight capabilities in Welsh Government, detailed responses from officials working in several other national governments and a set of recommendations geared to further develop and embed futures and foresight practices in Wales. This work has been supported by officials in Natural Resources Wales, Public Health Wales, and the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales’ office.

For those not familiar with futures and foresight, the report provides a very useful overview of different practices, techniques, and opportunities for further learning.

As Dr De Vito outlines:

‘Foresight enhances well‑being and sustainable development governance by integrating long‑term perspectives and supporting policymakers in acknowledging and navigating uncertainty and understanding the long‑term consequences of decisions.’

‘The Well-being of Future Generations Act constitutes a transformative platform upon which the Welsh Government can build on. Under this legislative framework, Welsh Government has the opportunity to address current futures literacy gaps, unlock mechanisms to overcome barriers, and embed long‑term thinking in the Welsh public sector.’

The research project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and conducted in collaboration with the University of the West of England, where Dr De Vito is a Senior Research Fellow at the Air Quality Management Resource Centre.

The Well-being of Future Generations Act’s sustainable development principle puts long-term thinking at the heart of our work. The Act requires listed public bodies, including the Welsh Government, to consider the long-term impact of our decisions. Dr De Vito’s research demonstrates the importance of good alignment between foresight practices and sustainable decision-making. This research provides us unparalleled insight to help us move forward our futures and foresight work here in the Welsh Government. With the framework provided by the Act and the findings from this research, we are uniquely able to build on the report’s recommendations to ensure that ongoing work is geared to the long term.

The annual Well-being of Wales report is due to be published on 28 September this year. This report will provide an update on well-being in Wales to help us assess whether we are making progress against the seven national well-being goals set out in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The report considers progress against the 50 national indicators, alongside a range of other relevant data. The report is a key accountability mechanism, to be transparent about the progress Wales is making towards its well-being goals.

As in 2022, an easy read report will be published in addition to the main report to help ensure everyone is able to access statistical information about Wales.

Ethnicity and well-being supplementary report

We are committed to producing supplementary reports alongside the main report where there is a need to do so. This year we will publish a supplementary report alongside the Well-being of Wales report which focuses on ethnicity and well-being.

Throughout the development of the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, the availability of data and evidence was a recurring theme. Across the Welsh Government, we’re looking at how we can improve the evidence base on ethnicity, and the Well-being of Wales report is a part of this. It’s not currently possible to breakdown all national indicators by ethnic group, but there is more we can do right now to better tell the story on progress towards becoming a more equal Wales. The supplementary report aims to bring together existing evidence in order to explore progress towards the well-being goals for different ethnic groups. Alongside other types of evidence, this can be used to help inform decision-making to create a more equal Wales.

What else is new with this year’s report?

The first wave of national milestones were set in December 2021 and last year the Well-being of Wales report included reporting on these milestones for the first time. National milestones assist in measuring the pace of change needed to achieve the well-being goals. The second wave of national milestones were set in November 2022 and we will report on the complete set of national milestones for the first time this year.

The suite of outputs comprising the Well-being of Wales report and the dashboard of National Indicators were assessed by the Office for Statistical Regulation (OSR). They were given National Statistics status last year, which means they have been independently assessed as meeting the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value. We’ve made some improvements this year based on feedback from the OSR as part of their assessment of this report. We’ve aimed to improve how we communicate any uncertainty in the data by putting short term changes in the context of long term trends. Where we use survey data, we have also commented on whether these changes are “statistically significant”, meaning they are unlikely to have occurred by chance. We are also developing a framework which sets out how we decide which types of data sources to use in this report and to measure the national indicators, which will be published ahead of next year’s release.

The Well-being of Wales page contains links to all previous Well-being of Wales reports, as well as data used in the reports, quality information, and national indicators. Check back on 28 September to see our “state of the nation” assessment for 2023.

On 29 September, we published the Wellbeing of Wales report, along with a separate report on children and young people’s well-being. We also published easy read versions of both reports. The suite of outputs comprising the Well-being of Wales report and the dashboard of National Indicators was given National Statistics status this year, which means it has been independently assessed as meeting the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value.

How do you use the Well-being of Wales report?

We currently have some understanding of how the report is used, but we are always looking of ways to improve the report, and make the information we publish more accessible and suitable for a wide ranging audience. Understanding how the report is used is key to this.

To gather your views on how you use the well-being report and national indicators, and how they can be improved, we have created a survey form where you can provide your comments and suggestions.

Please provide your responses by 21 Nov 2022.

Thank you for taking the time to share your views and we look forward to hearing from you.

The annual Well-being of Wales report is due to be published on 29 September this year. This report will provide an update on well-being in Wales to help us assess whether we are making progress against the seven national well-being goals set by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The report considers progress against the 50 national indicators, alongside a range of other relevant data.

As in 2021, an easy read report will be published in addition to the main report to help ensure everyone is able to access statistical information about Wales.

In 2018, we published a separate report on well-being in children, alongside the main Well-being of Wales. This report included analysis of children’s well-being based on the Schools Health Research Network, as well as using the Millennium Cohort Study and other sources such as data on children in workless households from the Annual Population Survey. We’ve received feedback that there’s a gap in data on children, so this year we’ll be producing an updated children and young people’s well-being report alongside the main report.

What else is new with this year’s report?

This year will be the first time that the Well-being of Wales report will include reporting on the national milestones. National milestones assist in measuring the pace of change needed to achieve the well-being goals. The first wave of national milestones were set in December 2021 and will be reported on in this year’s Well-being of Wales report where data is available. The second wave of national milestones are currently being consulted on and are expected to be laid before the Senedd in October 2022.

In December 2021 we also laid an updated set of national indicators. We will be reporting on some of these new indicators for the first time this year. These include:

• Percentage of people in employment, who are on permanent contracts (or on temporary contracts, and not seeking permanent employment) and who earn at least the real Living Wage
• Pay difference for gender, disability and ethnicity
• Proportion of employees whose pay is set by collective bargaining
• Active global citizenship in Wales
• Percentage of households spending 30% or more of their income on housing costs

We’ll update you here on this blog once the report is published, along with a request for your feedback on how we can keep improving it.

Mapping the national indicators to the well-being goals

In a previous blog post in January, we asked for your views on the current mapping of the national indicators to the seven well-being goals. Each indicator was mapped to one or more well-being goals when the indicators were originally set. This helps communicate how each indicator contributes towards achieving Wales’s well-being goals.

Thank you to those of you who responded to the survey. Based on your feedback, as well as discussion with a small group of people from the Welsh Government and other interested organisations, we decided to make some changes. We mapped indicators to additional goals where we felt that there was a clear link between the achievement of the goal and the item measured by the indicator, and we removed them where that link was now less clear.

Overall, we only made a small number of changes, which demonstrates that the original link between goals and indicators is still relevant. Most of the changes we made were for the globally responsible goal, where we asked ourselves “does a change in this indicator have an impact outside of Wales?”.

On 21 June 2022, the Welsh Government launched an twelve week consultation ‘Shaping Wales’ Future: Using National Milestones to measure our Nation’s progress (wave two).

The purpose of this consultation is to seek views on setting the second wave of national milestones for Wales that will assist Ministers in assessing progress towards achieving the seven well-being goals as set out in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

It’s important that we draw on the views and experiences of people across Wales as we carry out this work and we invite you to contribute. We are keen to hear your views on the proposals. The consultation closes on the 12 September so there is plenty of time for you to respond and share your thoughts and we want to hear from as many people as possible on the proposals.

We would also appreciate your support in raising awareness of this work through any newsletters or networks that you might run. If you have any engagement events of your own you would like to us to come along to share this work, please let us know.

The Welsh Government is committed to using the Well-being of Future Generations framework to create a stronger, fairer, greener and more compassionate Wales, addressing the unprecedented challenges we face. Our focus through our Programme for Government is on the ways we can improve the lives of people in Wales both now and in the future.

We are looking forward to hearing from you and working together to shape Wales’ future.

Today we have published a consultation which seeks views on extending the well-being duty on named public bodies in Part 2 of Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The consultation also seeks views on the opportunities for public bodies not subject to the Act.

The consultation will run from 14 July to 20 October 2022.

The Minister for Social Justice has published a Written Statement to launch the consultation.

It is important that we draw on the views and experiences of organisations and people from across Wales as we carry out this work and we invite you to contribute.

Today we have published the consultation on ‘Shaping Wales’ Future: Using National Milestones to measure our Nation’s progress (wave two).

The purpose of this consultation is to seek views on setting the second wave of national milestones for Wales that will assist Ministers in assessing progress towards achieving the seven well-being goals as set out in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

The consultation will run from 21 June to 12 September during which time we will be undertaking a programme of engagement to raise the profile of this important work and seek wider views.

The Minister for Social Justice has published a Written Statement to launch the consultation.

It’s important that we draw on the views and experiences of people across Wales as we carry out this work and we invite you to contribute!