This paper reports on the development to date of the numeracy conceptual framework for the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Project. The inclusion of a numeracy scale in the ALL survey offered a significant opportunity to develop a new conceptual framework for adult numeracy. This paper discusses the meaning of numeracy and the notion of numerate behaviour, represents a framework of five facets, looks at a complexity-rating scheme used to guide construction of the assessment tasks, and finally presents some preliminary findings about adults' ability to solve different percentage tasks.