FOI reference: FOI-2023-1622
You asked
I would like to understand the number (and proportion) of marriages in England and Wales where either spouse has been married before.
I would like this information by calendar year for the last completed 4 years and in addition to the England and Wales data, I would like it for the counties of Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request.
The estimates requested are available via the NOMIS webservice. The proportions requested can be calculated from this information.
Please see the following instructions for using NOMIS:
Under 'Data Sources' on the black menu, select 'Life Events'
- Select 'Marriages of opposite-sex couples in England and Wales by area of occurrence, broad age group, previous legal partnership status and ceremony type.'
- Under 'Download options' select 'Query data' where you can select the geographies and previous legal partnership statuses required.
- Data can be viewed online or downloaded. This is for opposite-sex couples only.
- Data for same-sex marriages is only available at the England and Wales level as the numbers are small compared with opposite-sex couples. For 2020 (the latest data available) the total number of same-sex marriages in England and Wales where at least one of the partners had been in a previous legal partnership was 847.
- This information is also available (separately for male and female couples) in our standard published tables.
Should you require the data for same-sex couples at a lower geography, please get in touch with us at Pop.Info@ons.gov.uk to discuss a bespoke data request. Such services are subject to disclosure controls, legal frameworks, resources, and an agreement of costs in line with the ONS Charging Policy. Please note, this information is likely to produce very low counts, so could be prohibited from release due to disclosure concerns.
If you need anything further, please do not hesitate to contact us.