You asked
Please provide the total number of deaths by suicide within either the UK, England, or England and Wales, (whichever is easiest for you), for this year 2020, up until the latest date for which you have statistics, or most recent convenient date.
Also, please provide the total number of deaths by suicide within that same chosen area, within the same period in 2019.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales. This is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.
We will be unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths, that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, until late 2020/ early 2021.
The majority of suicides require an inquest, where a coroner investigates the death. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a lag 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, our most up-to-date analysis for suicide data are our quarterly provisional figures, accessible via the following link: Quarterly suicide death registrations in England: 2001 to 2019 registrations and Quarter 1 to Quarter 3 2020 (provisional). This provides suicides that have been registered from January to September 2020. Please note, due to the aforementioned registration delay, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
Our annual Suicides in the UK bulletin and accompanying datasets provide data for deaths registered in the UK from suicide by sex, age, area of usual residence of the deceased and suicide method, up to 2019.