You asked
Could you tell me whether there are statistically significant excess deaths in Bath & North East Somerset for the period 1st January 2020 to 31st December 2020 and, if there are statistically significant excess deaths in the area, how many excess deaths above baseline are there for the area in the stated time period? If we are at below baseline, how much below baseline of expected deaths are we in Bath & North East Somerset for the period stated?
(i) Could you tell me how many suicides have been recorded for Bath & North East Somerset from 1st January 2020 to 31st December 2020? (ii) Could you tell me how many suspected suicides have taken place in Bath & North East Somerset in that time period are still awaiting a hearing in the Coroner's Court and could you tell me whether such suspected cases awaiting a hearing by the Coroner's Court are included in the total number of suicides that you have a record of?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
1. Unfortunately, we would be unable to provide you with excess deaths in the Bath and North East Somerset area for 2020.
In order to fulfil this request, we would need to create bespoke analysis, which we are not obligated to do under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We therefore consider this to be information not held. Bespoke services will be available to order once mortality data for 2020 have been finalised in the Summer of 2021. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
2. Most of these deaths are investigated by coroners in what's known as an inquest. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average.
Unfortunately, We do not receive information on deaths currently referred for Coroner's inquest or that are awaiting inquest.
Our statistics are based on the date of registration, therefore our annual Suicides in the UK release is based on 2019 death registrations.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the next update including deaths that have been registered from January to June of 2020. This is for deaths registered in 2020, and due to the registration delay described above, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
Suicides by local authority area will not be available until the publication of Suicides in the UK 2020 in September 2021.
As such, the information you have requested is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.