You asked
I would be very grateful if you could please provide me with the relevant information about any rise in domestic violence and suicide rates since the original lockdown back in March.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We will be unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths, that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, until late 2020 or early 2021.
Most of these deaths are subject to an inquest, where a coroner will investigate the death. The amount of time taken to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths from January to June 2020. This is for deaths registered in 2020, and due to the registration delay described above, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
Our annual data for domestic abuse in England and Wales for the year ending March 2020 is due to be published in November 2020.
Unfortunately, the CSEW was paused in March due to COVID-19 and the issues around interviewers entering houses to conduct the surveys. We have launched a telephone survey which will include questions around domestic violence during the COVID-19 period, but this data will be limited compared to what is usually collected in the face-to-face survey.
We also hope to be provided with police recorded crime data for the COVID-19 period and will also be using data from domestic abuse charities to help explain what has happened to prevalence of domestic abuse during this time. This will likely be included in our November release.
In the meantime, I am aware that some of the domestic abuse victim services have published some data for the COVID-19 period on their websites:
Mankind: https://www.mankind.org.uk/covid-19-policy-briefings/