StatsWales

StatsWales

StatsWales is the Welsh Government's official statistics portal. The v1 API provides structured access to 700+ published datasets across 11 topics.

Recommended tool order (do not page the full catalog in code)

1. Topic browsing — drill from a topic_id (Housing 56, Health 6, Education 3, Crime 8, Environment 23, Economy 1) to find dataset UUIDs in that subject area.
2. Dataset title search with query — when you know keywords (e.g. query="A&E waiting", query="pupils maintained"). Avoid listing all pages without query.
3. Dataset metadata — dimensions and column labels for the chosen UUID.
4. Filtered dataset view — pull rows with filter / sort_by server-side. Do not download huge unfiltered pages into code_execution.

Call these MCP tools directly. Use code_execution only when you need derived analysis on rows already returned.

Topics (top-level)

1. Business, economy and labour market (topic_id 1)
2. Crime, fire and rescue (8)
3. Education and training (3)
4. Environment, energy and agriculture (23)
5. Finance and tax
6. Health and social care (6)
7. Housing (56)
8. People, identity and equality
9. Poverty
10. Transport
11. Welsh language

Normalized response shapes

• Dataset list/search — list: {items, total, page, page_size, has_more}; search adds {query, total_catalog, scanned_pages, scan_truncated} (max 50 matches).
• Topics — {items, total, topic_id, selected_topic?, parents?}
• Metadata — {dataset_id, dataset, dimensions}
• View — {items: [{column: value}], columns, total, page, page_size, has_more, filter_applied?, sort_applied?}

View filters (server-side)

Pass filter as an array of {columnName, values[]}. Column names must match view column labels exactly (from metadata or a small unfiltered view sample) — e.g. Local authority, Year group, Year. Values must match display strings in the data (Year Group 7, not Year 7).

Example:

Optional sort_by: [{"columnName": "Data values", "direction": "DESC"}].

Pagination

• List/view: page_number, page_size (view default 25, min 5, max 500 on view).
• Invalid page_size returns a tool error (upstream validation surfaced).

Intent disambiguation

• Unemployment — distinguish claimant-count series vs WIMD employment-deprivation indicators; read dataset titles before answering.
• Renewable energy — installation/project counts vs generation (MWh); check measure column.
• Crime — StatsWales Crime topic may list fire/rescue datasets; police-recorded crime may be absent. Say so when search and topics return nothing relevant.