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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK's largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute of the UK. It is responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels. It also conducts the census in England and Wales every ten years.

One of the functions of the ONS is to classify organisations to the different sectors of the UK economy (and the rest of the world), according to internationally agreed standards. This is important for ensuring the consistency and comparability of economic statistics across the UK and when compared with other countries.

The classification of institutional units into sectors of the economy and the transactions between them inform the national accounts - a statistical framework for describing what is happening in national economies – and other statistics produced by the ONS including labour market statistics, trade statistics, and importantly, defining the boundary of the public sector in the national accounts to inform the UK public sector finances and government deficit and debt statistics.

The ONS is an independent organisation which derives its authority to classify organisations from the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, which established the ONS as a non-ministerial department and is overseen by the UK Statistics Authority, which reports directly to the UK Parliament. Section 21 of the Act gives the UK Statistics Authority the power to "determine, in relation to any body or person, whether or not statistics produced by or in relation to that body or person are official statistics".

Official statistics are defined in the Act as statistics that are produced by the UK Statistics Authority, a government department, a devolved administration, or any other person acting on behalf of the Crown. The Act also specifies that official statistics must comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, which sets out the principles and practices for producing high quality statistics that serve the public good.

When the UK was part of the EU and the European Statistical System, the UK was required under EU regulation to comply with guidance set out in both the European System of Accounts (ESA) 2010 manual and the Manual on Government Deficit and Debt. The ESA 2010 guidance is based on the System of National Accounts 2008 manual which is used by countries outside the EU. The UK currently continues to follow these set of rules and definitions for measuring and reporting the economic activity of different sectors of the economy, including the public sector.

The guidance is extensive and producers of national accounts statistics throughout the world interpret these manuals to ensure correct classifications of institutional units and transactions. Each classification decision is taken based on the characteristics and economic activities of the entity being classified, or the nature of the transaction between organisations, analysed in the context of this international guidance.