FOI/2022/4380
You asked
I would like to request under the freedom of information the statistics (including ages) for death by Suicide of male and female sports coaches and officials
The statistics (including ages) for death by Suicide for sports players male and female. For 2021 and 2020.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Suicides by occupation in England and Wales
Occupation is reported at the time of death registration by the informant. Data on occupation is coded using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010). 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). The recorded occupation likely reflects the deceased's main lifetime occupation or their occupation at the time of death. The occupation hierarchy tool allows exploration of the hierarchy of the SOC 2010 classification.
In this case, please refer to occupational code 3442: sports coaches, instructors and officials in the analysis linked below.
We hold the following analysis for England: Suicide by occupation, England: 2011 to 2015 and separately for Wales in section 9 of the article: Suicide in Wales since 1981.
We also hold this user-requested dataset Suicide by occupation, England and Wales, 2011 to 2020 registrations - Office for National Statistics. Please note that the numbers detailed in this publication cannot be used to ascertain the risk of suicide among occupations. Differences in numbers of deaths may merely reflect the underlying population structure as opposed to differences in risk.
Our annual suicides in England and Wales bulletin based on 2021 registrations and the quarterly suicide death registrations in England bulletin based on January to June 2022 was published on 6 September 2022. Suicides by occupation for 2021 will be released this month.
As such the information you have requested for 2021 is currently exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
Please see Release Calendar our for updates.
If the above publications do not meet your needs, we can create a custom output for suicide registrations in England and Wales using your specific date range, however, please see the reference to 2021 data and note the limitations on a bespoke output. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate).
Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.