FOI REF: FOI-2023-1373
You asked
Please provide:
Stillbirths in England and Wales for 2013 to 2023, broken down by local authority
Live Births by local authority for the same period
Data on death rates across each authority in England and Wales and the cause of death (leading cause is fine) for 2013 to 2023
Respiratory deaths for the same period
Deaths involving the COVID-19 vaccination by local authority for 2020 to 2023
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of birth and mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from birth or death certificates at registration.
Births
We publish annual birth figures within our interactive webservice NOMIS, using this online tool, you can request annual births by geographic area. NOMIS data starts from 2013 onwards. Birth figures for 2022 will be added to NOMIS imminently.
Stillbirth data by local authority are located within our birth summary tables. Each annual edition from 2015 onwards of the datasets contains a table including stillbirths by local authority.
The data we hold for 2023 is limited and subject to registration delays, and will be published in 2024. As such, information for 2023 is 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. 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.
Deaths
Regarding deaths, all of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) the coded mortality data available up to end of December 2019 is coded to version 2014 of the ICD10 framework. From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or
b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
We publish annual death figures within our interactive webservice NOMIS. This will allow you to extract mortality data and rates by local area and cause breakdown (all causes, leading causes, and selected causes). NOMIS mortality figures are based on where the ICD code was recorded as the underlying cause of death.
Deaths with a respiratory cause would be coded to ICD-10 code J00 - J99. Please see the following instructions for using NOMIS:
Open the following link: NOMIS
Select Geography, choose Countries ALL for England and Wales including non-residents or specific countries. Local authority level is available, please use the search bar to select.
Click Date and tick required dates or ALL for 2013-2021 range.
NOMIS automatically selects total ages, if you require Age disaggregation please tick the selected 5-year age bands.
NOMIS automatically selects number of deaths, if you require rates or percentages please tick this manually.
NOMIS automatically selects Total, if you require disaggregation by sex please tick boxes for male and female.
Underlying cause -- In the search bar type insert ICD-10 codes.
Click format if you require CSV download, if you require Excel format you do not need to follow this step.
Click Download the data.
Registered deaths in England and Wales in 2022 will be finalised within our Deaths Registered Series later in the year. 2022 data will then be added to our NOMIS webservice. This is to allow late registrations (those subject to Coroner's inquests) to be included. Please see the following link for further information: Impact of Registration delays.
As 2022 data will be added to NOMIS in the near future, Section 22(1) also applies to this information.
Deaths by vaccination status and local authority
We publish deaths 'involving' adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccination (where it was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate) in table 14 of the following publication: Monthly mortality dataset. There have been, so far, 64 deaths where a vaccine has been mentioned on a death certificate (across all ages) and 56 where it was the underlying cause. However, this is not aggregated by local authority.
This publication does not break this information down by local authority, however, we can produce this via our bespoke services route. Bespoke services are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, in line with our Charging Policy.
Such enquiries can be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.