Return to London?
There have been two other reviews of the ONS in the past 12 months. Sir Charlie said he was not planning to duplicate recent research and that he would use the existing work as an input into his own report.
Last year, Dame Kate Barker published her own independent review of the national accounts and balance of payments statistics.
She suggested that the ONS should establish a team of economists, possibly in London, which would allow it to draw on expertise from other government departments.
In 2007, the ONS announced that it was moving all of the statistical work that it carried out in London to other parts of the country, with most of the functions relocating to Newport. The vast majority of the existing staff decided not to relocate.
Sir Charlie said there would not be a big focus on whether the move to Newport was a mistake but that he was likely to examine what the consequences were.
Also in the past year, Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson published a review of the ONS measures of inflation, which encouraged the government to stop using the retail prices index as soon as possible because of its flawed methodology.
There was some surprise in 2013 when the ONS decided to leave the methodology behind the RPI unchanged despite identifying problems with the calculation that meant it overestimated inflation.