You asked
Please provide the following information:
1. How many suicide inquests are waiting to be heard related to deaths since 23 March?
2. How many have there been related to deaths since 23 of March?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry
Unfortunately, we are unable to advise how many inquests are waiting to be heard since 23 March 2020, as we do not hold this information. The Ministry of Justice may be better placed to answer this enquiry.
We will be unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths that occurred during the coranavirus (COVID-19) pandemic until at least early 2021.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths registered from January to June 2020. The publication explains that the majority of suicides require an inquest, where a coroner must investigate the cause of death. The amount of time taken to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date the death occurred and the date the death is registered. We refer to this as a registration delay and registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be five to six months on average. Because our data are based on death registrations, this delay means that most deaths recorded for 2020 so far would have occurred in 2019. More detailed information can be found in the publication.
Our statistics are based on the date of registration, therefore our annual Suicides in the UK release is based on 2019 death registrations. Data are available in this publication for 2011 to 2019.