You asked
Please can you provide mortality rates for England and Wales covering the 1st January 2015 - 31st December 2020.
Please can the data provided be sufficiently detailed to drill down/filter by the following criteria:
Cause of death
Gender
Age
Geographic area
We said
Thank you for enquiry.
Deaths registered in 2015 - 2019
This information is available through our NOMIS Webservice. Using the NOMIS webservice, will allow you to choose age band, sex, geographic area such as regional, unitary or local authority or MSOA and ICD-10 code.
Alternatively, the Death Registered Series will provide this information for England and Wales for 2015-2019.
Deaths registered in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
Deaths registered in 2020.
The Deaths Registered Series for 2020 will be published in July 2021. The information you have requested will be published on our website
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.
However, all-cause mortality and COVID-19 deaths is published in the following publications:
Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional provides all cause and COVID-19 deaths by 5 year age band and sex. This publication is updated every Tuesday.
Death registrations and occurrences by local authority and health board provides all cause or COVID-19 deaths by place of death at local authority or health board geographical level. This publication is updated every Tuesday
Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales This publication provides monthly deaths by all cause, COVID-19 and leading cause. This also includes COVID-19 deaths by MSOA geographical level.