FOI Reference: FOI/2022/3781
You asked
Please would you provide a breakdown of the top 10 causes of UK deaths, as recorded on death certificates, by month from January 2019 to the latest available month (presumably late in 2021) - preferably illustrated by way of a 'line chart' showing how the monthly rankings of each cause may have fluctuated month by month?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for and hold 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 and hold statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk.
Latest numbers of death registrations and age standardised rates, by month and leading cause are available in our monthly mortality analysis. This publication provides the top ten leading causes of death each month for the period July 2020 to December 2021. You can view the datasets here.
Figure 4 and 5 of the main article present bar charts showing the age-standardised mortality rate for selected leading causes of death, per 100,000 people, England and Wales, deaths registered in December 2021, compared to the five year average.
Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis of the number of death registrations by month and leading cause for 2019 for England and Wales, neither have we produced a line chart showing this information. However, we can provide this to you as a bespoke request for England and Wales only. Bespoke 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.
You might also be interested in the following publications.
Deaths by leading causes groupings by month of occurrence, England, 2015 to 2019. Please note that this data is for England only and not directly comparable to data that are published in the Deaths Registered Series or Monthly mortality analysis because it is based on date of occurrence, not date of registration.
Annual death registrations by leading cause, sex and five year age group are published in our Deaths Registered Series. You can view the data here.
You can also download the top 20 leading causes of death in England and Wales, for the period 2019 to 2020, via NOMIS. This is an interactive web service that provides annual mortality statistics for England and Wales, broken down by calendar year of registration, age, sex and area of usual residence. To create your own bespoke tabulations of mortality data within NOMIS, please follow these instructions:
- Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).
- Select Age - All ages or 5-year age bands.
- Select Gender - Total or Male/Female
- Select rates - All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.
- Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available). A full cause of death (ICD-10) breakdown is available for selection, as well as a list of the 47 leading causes of mortality.
Select format (Excel or CSV for example)
If you wish to request data or discuss this further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.