UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration’s support for the ADR UK community: Why the ADR UK Conference 2025 matters
Categories: Blogs, Conferences, ADR Wales, YDG Cymru, ADR UK Partnership
23 July 2025
This blog by Emma Turner, Senior Data Scientist at UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, explores UK LLC’s role within the ADR UK community and why the ADR UK Conference 2025 is a pivotal event for researchers using linked longitudinal and administrative data. As a Silver Sponsor, UK LLC shares its perspective on the value of collaboration, trusted research environments, and the exciting opportunities emerging from cross-sector data integration.
Who are UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration and what role do they play in the ADR UK community?
The UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) is the national trusted research environment (TRE) for data linkage in longitudinal research. We are a partnership of data controllers, longitudinal population studies (LPS), and infrastructure experts. As a relatively new addition to the UK’s research infrastructure, UK LLC emerged from the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study for Covid-19. We provide a national service to support the linkage ambitions of longitudinal studies and, through our TRE, simplify access to linked data from many studies for research in the public good. This enables discoveries through associations across health, social, behavioural, and economic research.
What makes us unique is our ability to bring together data (collected in some cases over decades) from over 400,000 participants across more than twenty of the UK’s established LPS. We systematically link this participant data to routine health data from the NHS, as well as administrative, socio-economic, and demographic data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and place-based data sources.
When we refer to place-based data, we mean information about the environments where people live, such as access to broadband services, availability of green space, and levels of air pollution.
Our pioneering work is building a unique data capability, drawing data from government service providers across the UK for our interdisciplinary user base. This ambition - to integrate data across diverse sources, owners, and geographies - can only be achieved through a system-wide, partnership-led approach.
Researchers can apply to access the UK LLC TRE through a single, streamlined application process, with an 8 to 12-week turnaround from application to data provision. The TRE is remotely accessible (from within the UK) and offers standard software (a Windows PC with STATA, SPSS, R; other software available on request) and data science tools (e.g. R, Python, Jupyter).
The linkage of LPS’ participant data to administrative data from HMRC and DWP has been made possible through support from ADR UK (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council). ADR UK has been instrumental in convening the various organisations needed to achieve these linkages. We are now implementing linkage with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This work aligns closely with ADR UK’s core mission: transforming access to public sector data to improve services and advance research for the public good.
This year, we’re excited to work with our LPS partners to make linked LPS and administrative data available for research.
Now is the time to apply: access is currently free for any ONS-accredited researcher in the UK with a public good research question.
Find out more about UK LLC
Visit the UK LLC website: https://ukllc.ac.uk/
Explore the data: https://explore.ukllc.ac.uk/
View our data documentation and TRE user guide: https://guidebook.ukllc.ac.uk/docs/welcome.html
Apply to access: https://apply.ukllc.ac.uk/
Subscribe: Sign up for UK LLC Insights and updates
UK LLC is led by the Universities of Bristol and Edinburgh, with partners UCL, Swansea University, City St George’s University of London, and the University of Leicester. UK LLC has a key infrastructure partnership with Population Research UK and is funded by UKRI, MRC and ESRC.
Why is UK LLC proud to be a Silver Sponsor of the ADR UK Conference 2025?
We value being part of the vibrant community that ADR UK brings together - spanning partner studies, data owners, regulators, and peer infrastructures. The ADR UK Conference in September this year, is a fantastic platform to share the UK LLC resource with current and future users.
We have an incredible asset with immense potential to unlock new scientific insights, but it’s vital we raise awareness. Sponsoring the ADR UK Conference 2025 helps us do that. It’s also our way of showing support for the essential work ADR UK does for the research community.
Join our workshop at the ADR UK Conference 2025
ADR UK’s support in hosting our workshop will allow us to co-develop a research-ready dataset for linked HMRC and DWP records in partnership with the ADR UK community.
I’m delighted to be running a workshop at the conference on Tuesday 16 September, in collaboration with DWP. This will begin with a short overview of UK LLC, followed by an introduction to the DWP and HMRC data that UK LLC will link and provide. We’ll then engage participants to help prioritise key data derivations that offer broad research utility and define what “research ready” data means.
This achievement represents the culmination of years of work, ambition, and collaboration from our LPS partners, the teams at DWP and HMRC, and more recently, our colleagues at ADR UK and ONS.
Why the ADR UK Conference 2025 is a must-attend event
The ADR UK community, and its flagship conference, brings together a unique mix of delegates and presentations. The event spans the breadth of work needed to use data about people, in innovative and impactful ways, inform policy and practice, and improve the public good.
This blend of expertise is essential. For public data use to succeed, our infrastructures and approaches must be legal, ethical, and socially acceptable, while delivering high-quality, relevant data to researchers. Co-development and team-based data science are vital to make this sustainable and scalable.
How UK LLC supports the ADR UK community
Longitudinal self-reported data is an exceptional research resource. It also offers a valuable perspective for researchers focused on whole-population data. LPS data helps assess the strengths and limitations of routine records and can uncover potential biases. It offers insight into individual behaviours, aspirations, and life circumstances before first contact with public services.
With the growing focus on mission-based research and persistent inequalities in health and wellbeing, linked LPS data provides unique value for policy makers.
As the pandemic showed, there is great benefit in combining linked LPS data (via UK LLC TRE) with whole-population resources: population-level data enables accurate prevalence estimates and insights across groups, while LPS data adds contextual depth and exposure detail.
We are committed to the principle of re-usable research and cross-system collaboration to tackle shared challenges. Insights developed in our conference workshop will have broader relevance to other data-sharing projects. Our work with DWP will help shape linked employment, earnings, and benefits data to better serve the longitudinal community and inform mission-based research.
In many ways, the UK’s longitudinal community has always led the way, working with participants to explore how diverse data can be integrated in legal and socially acceptable ways. We are proud to contribute these experiences and learnings to the wider conversation about data use for public good.
Explore the full ADR UK Conference 2025 programme
The ADR UK Conference 2025 is set to be a key event for the data research community - bringing together experts, policymakers, and innovators to explore the future of administrative data research.
To plan your visit and discover the full range of keynotes, workshops, and panels:
