You asked
Please provide for England and Wales:
- Number of registered deaths in 2018 for hospitals (all causes)
- Number of registered deaths in 2018 for care homes (all causes)
- Number of registered deaths in 2018 for private homes (all causes)
- Total number of deaths in 2018 (all causes)
And
- Number of registered deaths in 2020 for hospitals (all causes)
- Number of registered deaths in 2020 for care homes (all causes)
- Number of registered deaths in 2020 for private homes (all causes)
- Total number of deaths in 2020 (all causes)
We said
Thank you for your request.
Annual mortality figures can be found in our 'Deaths Registered Series datasets'. These provide deaths registered in the years 2012 to 2019 by age, sex, selected underlying causes of death and the leading causes of death.
These datasets also contain deaths by place of occurrence for all causes, including deaths at hospitals, care homes and private homes. This data can be found in Table 10 of the 2018 and 2019 spreadsheets.
All-cause death totals for England and Wales can be found in Table 1.
- 2018 total deaths E&W: 541,589
- 2019 total deaths E&W: 530,841
Provisional weekly death registration data for 2020 is available via the ONS weekly deaths bulletin. Weekly deaths are available in the 'weekly figures 2020' table, this is updated every Tuesday at 09:30. The weekly totals have been summed to provide the following cumulative figure:
- 2020 total death E&W: 614,114 (provisional)
The annual dataset for 2020 is scheduled for release in July 2021.
As such, the total number of deaths registered in hospitals, care homes, and private homes and finalised death totals in 2020 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.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.