FOI reference: FOI-2025-2952
You asked
I am writing under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request:
The number of live births registered in England and Wales with the first name "Farria" for each year from 2000 to 2024.
If below the ONS publication threshold, please confirm that fewer than three babies were registered per year.
We said
Thank you for your request.
In table six of the Baby names for girls in England and Wales dataset, you can search for all registered birth names, with a count of 3 or more in England and Wales. Data is available from 1996 to 2023.
2024 data is scheduled to be published on 31 July 2025.
If the name Farria does not appear in the listing, we are unable to confirm any further information due to our disclosure control policy. It is necessary to protect the confidentiality of uncommon baby names to prevent the identification of individuals and the potential linkage of these data to other datasets. As such, we do not release names with counts of fewer than three in England and Wales as a whole. Further information on the ONS policy on protecting the confidentiality in tables of birth and death statistics is available.
If you have any further queries, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
As this information from 2000-2023 is available on our website, it is therefore reasonably accessible via another route, and Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.
The 2024 information you have requested 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.