You asked
I would like statistics showing the total number of homicides and suicides in England and Wales for the year ending March 2021 please.
Also, if someone has had a positive COVID-19 result within 28 days of their murder or suicide, is that recorded as a "with COVID-19" death?
We said
Thank you for your request.
Homicide
We will publish our first-year end - March 2021 homicide figures from Police Recorded Crime data in July as part of the year ending March 2021 crime quarterly report. This data is based on the recording decision of the police at the time when the offence first comes to their attention. Our latest quarterly report covers crimes recorded up to September 2020:
We will subsequently publish homicide analysis from the Home Office Homicide Index for year ending March 2021 in February 2022. Amongst other things, this takes into account court outcomes for cases that have gone to trial. Here's the one we've recently published for year ending March 2020:
Suicide
Our most up-to-date analysis for suicide data are our quarterly provisional figures, accessible via the following link: Deaths caused by suicide by quarter in England; 2001-19 registrations and provisional data for 2020. This provides suicides that have been registered from January to December 2020, along with age and sex breakdowns on table 2. Please note, due to registration delay mentioned below, a large number of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
We will be able to publish finalised suicide statistics for 2020 in summer 2021 once we have received the data for the registrations delayed to coroner's inquests etc.
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.
Positive COVID-19 result within 28 days
Most suicide deaths require an inquest, where a coroner investigates the death. 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. This process also applies for homicides. If a coroner's inquest did identify COVID-19, then the coroner would only list it as a secondary cause if there was evidence that COVID-19 contributed towards the death. COVID-19 would not be listed as the underlying cause of death.
We do not have access to data on when the positive test was conducted as this is not recorded on the death certificate. We therefore consider this as information not held. However, deaths with a positive test are coded using the ICD10 code U0.71 and those with suspected COVID-19 but no test has been conducted are coded with ICD10 U0.72.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.