FOI reference: FOI-2025-2995
This response was updated following an internal review on 21 October 2025.
You asked
A previous FOI request (FOI reference: FOI-2024-2466) requested information of police employee death by suicide in the years 2022-2023.
Regarding the previous request, I would like to request the 2023-2024 figures, if they have been released.
We said
Thank you for your request
Data on occupation are coded using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2020). In all, there are:
- 9 major groups of occupations (for example, skilled trades occupations)
- 25 sub-major groups of occupations (for example, skilled construction and building trades)
- 90 minor groups of occupations (for example, building finishing trades)
- more than 350 individual occupations (for example, painters and decorators)
Full lists of occupations used in the analysis are reported in the accompanying data tables, and descriptions of these can be found in the ONS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) hierarchy.
The report is structured so that it describes larger categories of occupations before moving on to describe risk in specific occupations. Please be aware that we have limited information on ranks as per SOC coding and only the following breakdowns are held:
- 1162 Senior police officers
- 3312 Police officers (sergeant and below)
- 6311 Police community support officers
Please note, suspected suicide deaths are investigated by a coroner in an inquest. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a delay 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 five to six months, on average. More information about the impact of registration delays is available in our Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales: 2022 article. Therefore, the following published data are provisional, and may be subject to change as more registrations are received.
Under our user requested data service, we have published Suicide by occupation in England and Wales: 2023 and 2024, provisional data. Data relating to police officers can be found in table 7. Please note, data for senior police officers and PCSOs in Wales are not present in the dataset because no suicides were recorded for these occupation codes in 2023 or 2024.
SOC2020 is coded based upon the information given on the death registration by the informant regarding job description or role title.
Our occupation team then use this information to assign a SOC2020 code. It is unusual for specific agencies or company names to be included in the information we receive on the death registration. Our occupation coders looked into those that work in the National Crime Agency and found that the occupation would be assigned to code 2434, which has the description of ‘Business and related research professionals’.
Our statistics include the 43 Home Office police forces that are situated in England and Wales. A resident of England or Wales that was a police officer in Scotland or Northern Ireland could potentially be coded under this occupation if the death was also recorded in England or Wales.
For further information, please contact Health.data@ons.gov.uk.