You asked
Please provide the number of divorces and weddings filed between January 2019 and June 2020 (or as recent as possible).
Preferably for the whole of the UK, but England would suffice.
Please also break this down geographically - via region, area, district or even county.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Below is the latest marriage and divorce data we have available:
Marriages in England and Wales: 2017 provides the number of marriages that took place in England and Wales analysed by age, sex, previous marital status, Metropolitan District or Unitary authority, and civil or religious ceremony. The next release of marriage data for 2018 is provisionally scheduled for March 2021.
Divorces in England and Wales: 2018 provides annual divorce numbers and rates, by duration of marriage, sex, age, previous marital status, to whom granted, and the reason. The next release of divorce data for 2019 is provisionally scheduled for publication in October 2020.
Our Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages publication shows annual UK and constituent country figures for births, deaths, marriages, divorces, civil partnerships, and civil partnership dissolutions. This runs 2 years in arrears for marriage data and will be published after the marriages publication. This will also show a UK georgraphical breakdown.
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide data for 2019 and 2020 in response to your request, as we will publish this at a future date. Consequently, this data is regarded as exempt according to 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.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. Whilst we recognise the desirability of information being freely available, we also acknowledge that public authorities must have the freedom to be able to determine their own publication timetables. This allows them to deal with the necessary preparation, administration, and context of publication. Furthermore, public interest is best served through the public having confidence that the information published by ONS is accurate and final. Release on an ad-hoc basis would not achieve this aim and will cause unnecessary confusion if they were to be misrepresented. In this case, exempting the information clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
Information on why there is a delay in the acquisition of marriage data:
Details of civil marriage registrations come to us quite quickly as it's an electronic system. However, the recording of religious marriages is still paper-based and, therefore, they take longer to reach us. There are several stages involved: paper records from churches are sent to the local registration service; this information is then forwarded to the General Register Office, who manually key in details of each paper record; and then the data are sent to us. Delays can also be due to the closure of churches and changes in the clergy. We wait 2 years to receive as many religious marriage registration records as possible in order to balance timeliness against completeness of the data.