Police officers who have died by suicide 2020 to 2024

Dyddiad y datganiad:
22 August 2025

FOI reference: FOI-2025-3010

You asked

I would grateful if you could provide me with the number of police officers who have died by suicide. I require both senior officers (line 1172) and police officers below the rank of sergeant (line 3312) in both England and Wales for the years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

We said

Thank you for your request.  

Data on occupation is coded using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2020). In all, there are 9 major groups of occupations (for example, skilled trades occupations); 25 sub-major groups (for example, skilled construction and building trades); 90 minor groups (for example, building finishing trades); and more than 350 individual occupations (for example, painters and decorators). Full lists of occupations used in the analysis are reported in the accompanying data tables, and descriptions of these can be found in ONS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Hierarchy. The report is structured so that it describes larger categories of occupations before moving on to describe risk in specific occupations. Please be made aware that we have limited information on ranks as per SOC coding and only the following breakdowns are held: 

  • 1162 Senior police officers 

  • 3312 Police officers (sergeant and below) 

  • 6311 Police community support officers 

However in 2020, 2021 and 2022 occupation was coded using SOC 2010 - Office for National Statistics 

  • 1172 Senior police officers 

  • 3312 Police officers (sergeant and below) 

  • 3315 Police community support officers 

We have published the following analysis on suicides by occupation: 

Under our user requested data service, we have published Suicide by occupation in England and Wales: 2023 and 2024, provisional. Data relating to police officers can be found on table 7. 

Please note, suspected suicide deaths are investigated by a coroner in an inquest. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a delay between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average. Therefore the data published is provisional and may be subject to change as more registrations are received. More information about the impact of registration delays is available on the ONS website: Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales: 2022.

For further information, please contact Health.data@ons.gov.uk.

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