You asked
Please provide information regarding marriages that took place in the UK on the 28th of March 2020. I would like to know if any are due to COVID-19.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide data for 2020 in response to your request, as we will publish this at a future date. Consequently, this data is regarded as exempt according to 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.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. Whilst we recognise the desirability of information being freely available, we also acknowledge that public authorities must have the freedom to be able to determine their own publication timetables. This allows them to deal with the necessary preparation, administration, and context of publication. Furthermore, public interest is best served through the public having confidence that the information published by ONS is accurate and final. Release on an ad-hoc basis would not achieve this aim and will cause unnecessary confusion if they were to be misrepresented. In this case, exempting the information clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
Information on why there is a delay in the acquisition of marriage data:
Details of civil marriage registrations come to us quite quickly as it's an electronic system. However, the recording of religious marriages is still paper-based and, therefore, they take longer to reach us. There are several stages involved: paper records from churches are sent to the local registration service; this information is then forwarded to the General Register Office, who manually key in details of each paper record; and then the data are sent to us. Delays can also be due to the closure of churches and changes in the clergy. We therefore wait 2 years to receive as many religious marriage registration records as possible in order to balance timeliness against completeness of the data.