You asked
I would like to request the list of the top 100 boys first names and girls first names for births registered within the Durham County Council geographical boundaries which are submitted to the General Register Office (GRO), which in-turn informs the Office National Statistics report of the most popular first names for baby boys and baby girls for births registered within England and Wales within each calendar year. I would like to request the information for births registered within 2016 and 2017.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Information on baby names registered in England and Wales in 2016 can be obtained from the Vital Statistics Outputs team; data for 2017 are not published until September/October 2018.
We do not currently have any baby name statistics available below region level. Special extracts and tabulations of baby names data for England and Wales are however available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: vsob@ons.gov.uk
Please contact the Vital Statistics Outputs team directly in order to discuss your data requirements.
As this information is already available to you via this route, we consider that s.21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S.21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.