FOI reference: FOI-2024-2189
You asked
Regarding Public Health England's Fingertips website, entitled "Inequality in healthy life expectancy at birth", we have noticed this information has not been updated since 2020, despite more recent life expectancy data being published by the ONS. Please provide access to post 2021 data for inequality data broken down into each Local Authority.
Regarding your publication Health state life expectancies in England, Northern Ireland and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk), are you able to confirm whether the latest data for this metric will be published at Local Authority level, and if so when that will be?
We said
Thank-you for your request.
We do produce statistics on the inequality in HLE by national deprivation deciles in England. The latest publication covered the period 2011-13 to 2018-20. We have a date of 30 January 2025 to update the time series to 2021-23.
The update to the Healthy Life Expectancy for upper tier local authorities in England to cover the period 2011-13 to 2021-23 using new rebased populations is planned for publication on 12 December 2024. Please note, it is currently uncertain whether this publication will be sex specific or person level at upper tier local authority level of geography.
As the requested information is planned for publication in the near future, this is exempt from release under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). 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.
We do not produce statistics on the inequality in healthy life expectancy within local authorities as a regular release. We did produce bespoke analyses of the slope index of inequality in healthy life expectancy within upper tier local authorities using health prevalence data from the census 2011, in 2015 based on the rank order of Middle Layer Super Output Areas by the index of multiple deprivation. We do not hold an update of this information. However, we are considering a repeat of this publication in 2025 based on 2021 census health prevalence data and are canvassing interest with Department for Health and Social Care and other stakeholders.