Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales: 2025

These are our first annual publications on births and deaths for the data year 2025. For the first time, we have produced provisional total fertility rates and mortality rates at country level using projected populations for 2025. The final rates will be released later in the year as usual. For our births counterpart please see our Births in England and Wales: 2025 bulletin.

• There were 570,988 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2025, an increase of 0.4% compared with 2024 (568,613 deaths) but 6.1% lower than the 2020 coronavirus (COVID-19)-related spike.

• The provisional age-standardised mortality rate (ASMR) in England and Wales for 2025 was 914.6 deaths per 100,000 people, the lowest since our data time series began in 1994.

• While Wales continued to have higher ASMRs (1,008.7 deaths per 100,000 people) compared with England (906.9 deaths per 100,000 people) in 2025, both rates have fallen to their lowest level since our data time series began in 1994.

• By sex, males continued to have higher ASMRs compared with females in 2025, with 1,074.8 deaths per 100,000 males and 782.7 deaths per 100,000 females.

• The East of England had the biggest percentage increase in the numbers of deaths registered in 2025 compared with 2024, while the North West had the biggest percentage decrease.

• Dementia and Alzheimer's disease continued to be the leading cause of death in England and Wales, with 72,272 deaths registered in 2025 (12.7% of all deaths).

Age-standardised mortality rates

Age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) are used to allow comparisons between populations that may contain different proportions of people of different ages. The 2013 European Standard Population is used to standardise rates; more information is available in our User guide to mortality statistics.

Coronaviruses

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines coronaviruses as "a large family of viruses that are known to cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)". Between 2001 and 2018, there were 12 deaths in England and Wales due to a coronavirus infection, with a further 13 deaths mentioning the virus as a contributory factor on the death certificate.

Coronavirus (COVID-19)

COVID-19 refers to the "coronavirus disease 2019" and is a disease that can affect the lungs and airways. It is caused by a type of coronavirus. Further information is available from the World Health Organization (WHO) Coronavirus disease article.

Crude mortality rates

Crude mortality rates are used to allow comparisons between populations of different sizes, so are a better measure to compare across time than numbers of deaths alone. However, crude rates do not take account of differences in the structure of populations, such as the age and sex distribution (see "Age-standardised mortality rates" in this Glossary). More information is available in Section 7: Death rates, ratios and standardisation of our User guide to mortality statistics.

Death registration

Mortality statistics are compiled from information supplied when deaths are certified and registered as part of civil registration, which is a legal requirement. According to the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, a death should be registered within five days unless it is referred to a coroner for investigation. Mortality statistics for a given time period can be based on occurrence (death date) or registration (registration date); registration delay is the difference between date of occurrence and date of registration.

Statistical significance

The term "significant" refers to statistically significant changes or differences. Significance has been determined using the 95% confidence intervals, where instances of non-overlapping confidence intervals between estimates indicate the difference is unlikely to have arisen from random fluctuation. More information is available on how we measure and communicate uncertainty for our surveys.

Figures in this release only represent deaths that were registered in England and Wales. These include some deaths of individuals whose usual residence was outside England and Wales (1,201 of the 570,988 deaths registered in 2025). These deaths are included in totals for England and Wales combined but excluded from breakdowns for England and Wales separately. Any deaths of residents that happened abroad are not included.

Death certification reform

Changes to the process by which causes of deaths are scrutinised and certified (Death certification reform and the introduction of medical examiners) came into force in England and Wales on 9 September 2024. This introduced a statutory medical examiner system, under which all non-coronial deaths must be independently scrutinised by a medical examiner before registration. The medical examiner is responsible for sending the medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) to the registrar and notifying the informant when the death can be registered.

The reform also introduced a revised MCCD and a new medical examiner MCCD (ME MCCD) for use in specific circumstances. These changes are intended to improve the consistency and quality of death certification.

Further information is available in our Death Certification Reform, England and Wales: 9 September 2024 to 30 June 2025 (provisional data) article.

Death registration

This bulletin is based on the date that deaths are registered, not the date of death (date of occurrence). The number of days between death occurrence and registration depends on many factors and the time taken to register can vary (for example, deaths referred to the coroner). Read more in our Impact of registration delays on mortality statistics in England and Wales: 2022 article.

Producing statistics based on date of death that are both timely and sufficiently complete is not possible. Statistics based on date of registration are both timely and complete, but it is important to consider the limitations of using registration data over occurrence data. Measures of the median time taken to register deaths are important statistical quality metrics to help users understand this.

Before 9 September 2024, deaths should legally have been registered within five days of the death occurring or the date on which the body was found (including weekends and bank holidays), unless a coroner was involved.

We continue to monitor the time taken to register a death as part of our ongoing assessments of the quality and timeliness of mortality data, including whether death certification reforms have had any effect.

Further detail is available in Table 4 of our Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional dataset.

Coding of deaths

Deaths are cause coded using the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10). Deaths are coded to ICD-10 using IRIS software (version 2013). Cause of death reported here represents the final underlying cause of death for ages 28 days and over. This takes account of additional information received from medical practitioners or coroners after the death has been registered.

In 2011, there was an update to the coding framework (detailed in our Results of the ICD-10 v2010 bridge coding study) used to code cause of death. This meant that deaths from vascular dementia that were previously coded to cerebrovascular disease (I60 to I69) would be coded to vascular dementia (F01). There were further changes to the framework in 2014 (detailed in our Impact of the implementation of IRIS software for ICD-10 cause of death coding bulletin) where deaths that were coded to chest infection (J98) would now be coded to chest infection (J22). Those deaths that mentioned dementia (F01 or F03) would now be coded to dementia (F01 or F03). Additionally, deaths that were previously coded to aspiration pneumonia (I69) where dementia was mentioned on the death certificate would now be coded to dementia (F01 or F03).

For deaths registered from 1 January 2022, cause of death is coded to the ICD-10 classification using MUSE 5.8 software. Deaths registered between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 were coded using MUSE 5.5 and previous years were coded to IRIS 4.2.3. For more information, see our Cause of death coding in mortality statistics, software changes article.

Strengths and limitations

To provide the public with timely statistics, previous versions of this release were based only on number of deaths. These numbers could not be used for comparison across groups or time, as population size and age structure has not been taken into account. We have introduced provisional mortality rates to this publication, these use population projections. Finalised deaths registration figures, including age-standardised mortality rates, use population estimates and will be released in our Deaths registered in England and Wales bulletin in summer 2026.

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Mortality statistics in England and Wales quality and methodology information (QMI) report and our User guide to mortality statistics.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".