FOI reference: FOI-2025-2725
You asked
- How many drug-related incidents have been recorded in the last 10 years at UK music festivals (or the number of people identified with drug-related incidents if the number of incidents is not available)?
- How many drug-related deaths have been recorded in the last 10 years at UK music festivals (or the number of people identified with drug-related deaths if the number of incidents is not available)?
- How many alcohol-related incidents have been recorded in the last 10 years at UK music festivals (or the number of people identified with alcohol-related incidents if the number of incidents is not available)
- How many alcohol-related deaths have been recorded in the last 10 years at UK music festivals (or the number of people identified with alcohol-related deaths if the number of incidents is not available)
- The number of non-fatal injuries in the last 10 years at UK music festivals.
For the requested time period, please use the most recent available date to today (27/03/2025) and backdate 10 years from this date. Please break down each statistic according to the festival at which the incident/death was recorded, as well as per year.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of mortality statistics for deaths registered in England and Wales. For statistics pertaining to Scotland or Northern Ireland you can contact National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Centre, respectively.
Our mortality statistics are derived from information collected on the death certificate. We do not hold any information on drug or alcohol related incidents other than deaths. NHS England may be able to help with those sections of your request using their Hospital Episode Data. They can be contacted on england.contactus@nhs.net.
In order to produce figures at sub-national level, we link the death registration to the National Statistics Postcode Lookup. The postcode lookup contains many sub-national geographies such as regions, local authorities and counties. We are unable to map the death registration to specific areas such as music festivals.
If you are looking to obtain information using specific postcode sectors of the areas you want to look at, this could be created as a bespoke output. Bespoke services are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, in line with the ONS Charging Policy. Please contact Health.Data@ons.go.uk for further information.
Our publications on Deaths Related to Drug Poisoning and Alcohol Specific Deaths provide the number of deaths for each local authority in England and Wales, which may also be helpful. Please note, these figures are based on the local authority of residence rather than the local authority where the death occurred.