You asked
I would like to request statistics for the number of marriages and civil partnerships of same sex couples in the UK, by year, since 2013 up to the end of 2016.
We said
2013 marriage statistics are the latest available for England and Wales; however final marriage statistics for 2014 will be published 14 March 2017, and will include statistics for marriages of opposite sex and same sex couples. Marriage statistics for 2015 are planned to be released autumn-winter 2017.
2015 civil partnership statistics are the latest available for England and Wales, civil partnership statistics for 2016 are planned to be released August-September 2017.
Due to our planned publication dates we are unable to make figures available prior to these dates, in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
Section 22 of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act exempts information requested by an applicant if it is intended for future publication. It encourages public authorities to place information in the public domain proactively. The FoI Act recognises the desirability of information being freely available in its own right, but section 22 also acknowledges that public authorities must have freedom to be able to determine their own publication timetables. This allows them to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publication.
In this situation we consider that the public interest is best served through the public having confidence that the information published by us is accurate and final. Publishing "snapshots" of the report which are complete on an ad-hoc basis would not achieve this aim and is likely to cause unnecessary confusion if they were misrepresented and cast possible doubt.