Quality and Methodology Report

1. Methodology background

2. About this quality and methodology report

This quality and methodology document contains information on the quality characteristics of the data as well as the methods used to create it. The information in this document will help you to:

• understand the strengths and limitations of the data

• learn about existing uses and users of the data

• reduce the risk of misusing data

• help you to decide suitable uses for the data

• understand the methods used to create the data

3. Important points

3.1. Licensed clinics are inspected on a regular basis and are obligated to report incidents to the HFEA when they are identified. Further information about how the HFEA regulates is available in the Fertility Sector 2025/26 report.

3.2. All licensed fertility clinics in the UK are required by law to provide information to the HFEA about treatments they carry out and their outcomes. We hold this information on our Register, which contains information about fertility patients, partners, donors, treatment and children born as a result of these treatments.

3.3. The regulatory information that we publish is a snapshot of data as of August 2026, and relates to the financial year from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. The calculations used regarding proportions of patients and cycles are carried out using the latest available data from 2024 (generally sourced from Fertility treatment 2024: trends and figures report), which was a snapshot of data as of May 2026.

3.4. As our database consists of a live Register and we rely on quality of data reporting from clinics, information may be subject to change and the figures published here may differ slightly to those published before or in the future (For further information, please see our Quality and Methodology report).

3.5. This publication reports national data trends over time. Clinic-specific data is published on our website’s clinic search tool, Choose a Fertility Clinic, as well as in our Fertility Sector report. Further information about the Register and data research using the Register can be found in our Data research webpage.

4. Quality summary

We make information from inspections and regulatory work available to patients, clinic staff, media, researchers and the public to show how the fertility sector has changed over time, and highlight good practice. We publish data from inspections, incident reports, complaints, and patient feedback, covering licence type, English region and UK nations annually. The data published is a snapshot and is subject to change.

5. Quality characteristics of UK Register data

5.1. Relevance

The HFEA is required to inspect all licensed clinics and inspectors record non-compliances identified during these inspections. Clinics are required by law to report incidents when identified. Additional insights covered in the Fertility Sector report are from patient complaints and feedback received by the HFEA through our Choose a Fertility Clinic webpage. These different forms of data allow the HFEA to gain overall insight into how the sector is performing and identify areas of concern.

5.2. Accuracy and reliability

The HFEA uses quality assurance processes, including recreation and crosschecking of data used within the report by independent members of staff to ensure accuracy and logic of any calculations used.

5.3. Coherence and comparability

The Fertility Sector report is generally comparable to previous iterations (including the previously named State of the Fertility Sector reports), as most data has been analysed and presented in the same way. Changes within the sector each year may result in differences in levels of reporting, changes to regulatory action, and patient satisfaction.

More detailed information about Register data can be found in the Quality and Methodology report for our annual register publications. Fertility Trends is our annual publication on national and regional trends in fertility treatments and live birth rates. Delayed data validation due to a large-scale data migration project moving our 30-year fertility Register to a new system means our reports published contain preliminary data for 2020-2021.

Clinic-level information is published on the HFEA Choose a Fertility Clinic webpage and may differ due to different reporting periods and processes.

When using Register data, values under five, and any calculations with numerators and denominators below five, are supressed.

5.4. Accessibility and clarity

Our recommended format for accessible content is a combination of HTML web pages for narrative, charts and graphs (including alt-text), with data being provided in usable formats such as Excel spreadsheets. Underlying supplementary datasets provide more detailed statistics. Alternative formats can be requested for all tables/figures in our reports. Interactive figures have been created using Microsoft Power BI using in-built accessibility functions with alternative image versions and Excel underlying data provided.

5.5. Timeliness and punctuality

A snapshot of each financial year’s inspection and regulatory data is published each year, generally in the autumn to permit time for the inspections carried out at the end of the financial year to go through Licencing Committee. There may be some outstanding incidents reported at the end of the financial year which have yet to be assigned a grade of severity, however by the time of reporting most have been finalised.

6. Methods used to produce reports using regulatory data

The data used in the Fertility Sector report 2025/26 relates to the financial year from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.

6.1. Inspection data and active centres

This information is taken directly from the HFEA staff responsible for organising inspections and includes data relating to how many inspections have been carried out each year by type, the number of active centres, and their locations. This information is stored in a variety of locations, including the IT system used by HFEA inspectors when carrying out their regulatory work.

Further information on active centres regarding funding type and whether they are standalone or part of a group is extracted from a mixture of locations including from IT systems and inspectors.

6.2. Incident data

Information on all incidents that occurred in 2025/26 is extracted directly from IT systems. This is processed and analysed to present incidents by grade.

Additional analysis is carried out to identify cases of severe and critical OHSS using detailed information provided within incident forms. Where grading of OHSS is listed as two severities, generally the more severe grading is listed. OHSS incidents were reviewed manually to determine whether any known cases of OHSS occurred in treatments solely related to egg donation.

Due to a high number of OHSS incidents (18) reported from one clinic in 2025/26 that occurred in previous financial years, these cases were manually re-allocated to the year in which the OHSS incident occurred. In overall incident counts provided in the report and underlying data, these cases have been excluded from the 2025/26 financial year.

6.3. Non-compliance data

Non-compliances are recorded in a central database by inspectors, including information about which inspection they were identified at, assigned severity, and details about the issue(s) identified. This information is analysed to present the non-compliances by grade.

6.4. Patient feedback

This information is submitted by patients on their clinic specific webpage of the HFEA Choose a Fertility Clinic website. The patient feedback is stored in an IT system where the data was extracted and analysed.

6.5. Patient complaints about clinics

Patient complaints about clinics are often received via email, and dedicated members of HFEA staff who respond to complaints submit information about the total numbers of complaints and any themes each year.