Deaths vis a vis population size

You asked

Please confirm these stats sent by ONS and percent deaths vis a vis population size both years:

2019:

England and Wales: 530,941

Scotland: 62,881

Northern Ireland: 15,758

Total: 621,121

2020:

England and Wales: 586,542

Scotland: 64,083

Northern Ireland: 17,614

Total: 668,239

Excess: 47,118 (67m population)

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the 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.

Please note that some of the figures you have included above are incorrect.  Correct data are presented in the tables below.

ONS produce the annual Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages dataset which contains historic mortality statistics up to 2019.

Latest provisional 2020 mortality data for England and Wales are available in the provisional weekly deaths publication.  This publication shows that 614,114 deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2020 (up to week ending 1st January 2021; Week 53). This publication doesn't include a breakdown for England and Wales separately, but this is available by calendar month in the monthly mortality analysis publication and will be published via our Deaths Registered Series and NOMIS when death registrations for 2020 are finalised in July 2021.

Population statistics for the UK and its constituent countries for 2019 are available in the Population estimates for the UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: mid-2019 publication.

Mid-year population estimates for 2020 are not yet published, however ONS have produced population projections for 2020, which are here: National population projections table of contents. For queries regarding population statistics, please contact pop.info@ons.gov.uk.

Mortality and population figures for the UK and its constituent countries for 2019 and 2020 are presented in the following tables.  Direct links to the data presented are provided above.

You might also be interested in our recently published Annual deaths and mortality rates, 1938 to 2020 (provisional) analysis.  This table presents annual numbers of death registrations, population estimates and crude & age-standardised mortality rates, for England and Wales, from 1938 to 2020 (age-standardised mortality rates start in 1942). Deaths published in this release are based on calendar years, so figures for 2020 differ slightly to those presented in this response (in the table above) because they are based on latest provisional weekly deaths, which run from 3^rd January 2020 to 1^st January 2021.

We also publish age standardised mortality rates per 100,000 population for July 2020 to January 2021 in our monthly mortality analysis publication. Rates for 2020 are based on provisional death registrations and population projections.

In order to provide special extracts and bespoke tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales up to 2019, we would need to create bespoke analysis, which we are not obligated to do under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We therefore consider this to be information not held. However, the information you have requested may be available to commission as bespoke analysis. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.