You asked
Please can you provide figures for suicide deaths in England for each year since 2011 to date (2021)?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Suicides in the UK provides registered deaths in England and wales from 1981 to 2019. This is the latest annual data available. We have pasted Table 2 in this publication in the following grid:
| Year | Deaths | Rate | LCL | UCL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 5,316 | 10.8 | 10.5 | 11.1 |
| 2018 | 5,021 | 10.3 | 10.0 | 10.6 |
| 2017 | 4,451 | 9.2 | 8.9 | 9.5 |
| 2016 | 4,575 | 9.5 | 9.2 | 9.7 |
| 2015 | 4,820 | 10.1 | 9.8 | 10.4 |
| 2014 | 4,882 | 10.3 | 10.0 | 10.6 |
| 2013 | 4,727 | 10.1 | 9.8 | 10.4 |
| 2012 | 4,513 | 9.6 | 9.3 | 9.9 |
| 2011 | 4,518 | 9.7 | 9.4 | 10.0 |
Download this table Table 2: Age-standardised suicide rates (with 95 per cent confidence limits): by sex, England, 1981 to 2019 registrations
.xls .csvSuicides 2020 and 2021
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths from October to December 2020 and provisional data for January to March 2021 which was released in April 2021. The publication explains that most suicides require an inquest, where a coroner must investigate the cause of death. The amount of time taken to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date the death occurred and the date the death is registered.
We refer to this as a registration delay and registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be five to six months on average. Because our data is based on death registrations, this delay means that most deaths recorded for 2020 so far would have occurred in 2019. More detailed information can be found in the publication.
Our next Suicide in England and Wales publication is scheduled for release in September 2021, which will include 2020 data. Our quarterly publication will also be updated with more recent figurese in the next quarter. As such, some of 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.