You asked
How many people have died in Bristol due to being homeless and how many homeless people have committed suicide.
We said
Thank you for your query regarding suicide data.
We publish an annual statistical bulletin on suicides in the UK, which is available on our website: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2014registrations
Mortality data held by ONS is collected from the information provided at death registration.
The mortality statistics we produce come from information collected at death registration. We code all conditions certified on the death certificate using the classification structure in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) published by the World Health Organisation. From all of these conditions an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined as the disease or injury that initiated the train of morbid events directly leading to death. By definition, homelessness cannot be selected as a cause of death or used in mortality coding, so we are unable to provide you with statistics on those who have died due to being homeless.
It may be possible to identify whether a person was homeless at the time of death from information collected at death registration however this would require a bespoke extract and text searching of the death registration records. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: mortality@ons.gov.uk. We recommend that you contact the Mortality Analysis team directly in order to discuss your data requirements in more detail.
As this information is already available to you via this route ONS considers that S21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.