You asked
I am wanting to know the deaths from suicide in the U.K. from March 1st. 2020 to the present day (April 12th. 2021).
We said
Thank you for enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, we do not hold the requested data for the whole of the UK. Should you wish to obtain the requested data for Scotland and Northern Ireland, NRS and NISRA can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
Suicides in England and Wales 2020:
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths registered up to December 2020. This 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 quarterly publication will be updated with 2021 data in the next quarter.
The following publication contains finalised suicide data for both England and Wales up to 2019: Suicide in England and Wales. This publication will be updated with finalised 2020 data in September 2021. This is to allow as many delayed registrations to be processed as possible before finalising the figures.