In August 2026, 14,155 people in Coventry were claiming unemployment-related benefits.

One dataset published new figures this morning: the August claimant count, released by the Office for National Statistics and the Department for Work and Pensions through NOMIS. The other four we checked — the prison bulletins, the port and airport tables, house prices and NHS waiting times — came back byte-for-byte identical to the copies we already hold, so today's edition is one dataset, and says so rather than padding.

Alongside the new month, the publisher restated July's figures across the country — the routine maturing of a provisional month, 566 values across 361 local authorities, most moving down by one to two per cent. The full list is in our public corrections log. Among them: Birmingham's July count, which we printed as 77,310 on 18 August, now stands at 76,120 in the publisher's series. The same applies forward: today's August figures, including the lead's, are the publisher's first estimate of the month and may be restated in next month's release.

Yesterday we reported that our collection of NHS England's waiting-times pages had failed because the pages had changed. Today the links were back and the files we collected were identical to those we already hold, so the failure looks to have been transient at the publisher's end. The July waiting-times figures we reported on 10 September stand, and nothing on our side needed fixing.

Still to come within the fortnight: HM Land Registry's July house price figures have historically landed on the second or third Wednesday of the month, which points at tomorrow or the 23rd.