FOI ref: FOI-2025-2872
You asked
FOI request relating to maternities by mothers' age in England and Wales 2023 (or earlier years if 2023 not available).
As currently reported in ONS Birth registrations, "maternities, live births, stillbirth" by "age of mother at registration" are recorded for each year of the mother in the age range 14 to 49 (table 5).
'Under 14 years' and '50 yrs and over' are each reported as a group.
Under FOI, please provide information for 'England & Wales' for 'all registration types' and for 'all ages of father', the number of 'maternities, live births, stillbirth' for each of the ages of the mothers for:
10yrs, 11, 12, 13
50yrs, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65yrs and older
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately, we cannot provide figures for the numbers for maternities, live births and stillbirths where the age of the mother is less than 15 years, or by the mother's single year of age over 55, or any further breakdown of the number of stillbirths by mothers' age. This is to protect the confidentiality of individuals. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual. As we are prohibited by law from releasing information in which individuals can be identified, Section 44(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.
However, we can explore providing alternative aggregate outputs of this information that would protect the confidentiality of individuals through our bespoke services route. For example, we may be able to provide figures for the number of maternities and live births by single year of age of mother from 50 to 55 years. These statistics would need to be created. This service is subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs in line with our charging policy. Please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk for further advice.