There were 9.7 homicides for every million people in England and Wales in 2023/24, unchanged from the previous year, but a decline when compared to 2021/22, when the rate was 11.6. In 2022/23, the homicide rate among UK jurisdictions was highest in Scotland, at 10.4 homicides per million people, and lowest in Northern Ireland, which had a homicide rate of 6.8. Throughout this provided time period, the homicide rate for Scotland has declined substantially. From 2003/04 to 2013/14, Scotland had the highest homicide rate among UK jurisdictions, with a peak of 27 homicides per million people recorded in 2004/05. Uptick in violent crimes since the mid-2010s In 2002/03, there were 1,047 homicides in England and Wales, but by 2013/14 this had fallen to just 533, with similar declines also evident in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Unlike the in the latter two jurisdictions, however, there was a noticeable uptick in homicides in England and Wales from 2016/17 onwards, with 720 recorded in 2019/20. Additionally, there has been a surge in violence against the person offences in England and Wales, rising from around 600,000 in 2012/13, to more than 2.1 million ten years later in 2022/23. It is unclear what exactly is driving this trend, but in an attempt to reverse it, the UK government has started to increase the manpower and funding available to UK police forces. Struggles of the UK justice system Recent boosts to police funding come after almost a decade of austerity was imposed on most public services. Although some government departments were protected from this, the Ministry of Justice saw its budget decline from 9.1 billion pounds in 2009/10,to just 7.35 billion pounds in 2015/16. Although the Justice Budget has also increased recently, there are several signs that the system as a whole is under pressure. There is a significant backlog of cases at Crown Courts in England and Wales, with serious offences taking an average of almost two years to pass through the court system. Meanwhile, prisons are struggling with severe capacity issues, along with upticks in violence and self-harm.

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, by age, sex, region and Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), in the latest weeks for which data are available.

There were 10,052 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending August 22, 2025, compared with 9,428 in the previous week. During this time period, the two weeks with the highest number of weekly deaths were in April 2020, with the week ending April 17, 2020, having 22,351 deaths, and the following week 21,997 deaths, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Death and life expectancy As of 2022, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 82.5 years, and almost 78.6 years for men. Compared with 1765, when average life expectancy was under 39 years, this is a huge improvement in historical terms. Even in the more recent past, life expectancy was less than 47 years at the start of the 20th Century, and was under 70 as recently as the 1950s. Despite these significant developments in the long-term, improvements in life expectancy stalled between 2009/11 and 2015/17, and have even gone into decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males. COVID-19 in the UK The first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were recorded on January 31, 2020, but it was not until a month later that cases began to rise exponentially. By March 5 of this year there were more than 100 cases, rising to 1,000 days later and passing 10,000 cumulative cases by March 26. At the height of the pandemic in late April and early May, there were around six thousand new cases being recorded daily. As of January 2023, there were more than 24.2 million confirmed cumulative cases of COVID-19 recorded in the United Kingdom, resulting in 202,156 deaths.

There were 2,784 infant deaths in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 2,620 in the previous year. The number of infant deaths in 2020 was the fewest in the provided time period, especially compared with 1900 when there were 163,470 infant deaths.

Annual UK and constituent country figures for births, deaths, marriages, divorces, civil partnerships and civil partnership dissolutions.

This publication of the SHMI relates to discharges in the reporting period April 2024 - March 2025. The SHMI is the ratio between the actual number of patients who die following hospitalisation at the trust and the number that would be expected to die on the basis of average England figures, given the characteristics of the patients treated there. The SHMI covers patients admitted to hospitals in England who died either while in hospital or within 30 days of being discharged. To help users of the data understand the SHMI, trusts have been categorised into bandings indicating whether a trust's SHMI is 'higher than expected', 'as expected' or 'lower than expected'. For any given number of expected deaths, a range of observed deaths is considered to be 'as expected'. If the observed number of deaths falls outside of this range, the trust in question is considered to have a higher or lower SHMI than expected. The expected number of deaths is a statistical construct and is not a count of patients. The difference between the number of observed deaths and the number of expected deaths cannot be interpreted as the number of avoidable deaths or excess deaths for the trust. The SHMI is not a measure of quality of care. A higher than expected number of deaths should not immediately be interpreted as indicating poor performance and instead should be viewed as a 'smoke alarm' which requires further investigation. Similarly, an 'as expected' or 'lower than expected' SHMI should not immediately be interpreted as indicating satisfactory or good performance. Trusts may be located at multiple sites and may be responsible for 1 or more hospitals. A breakdown of the data by site of treatment is also provided, as well as a breakdown of the data by diagnosis group. Further background information and supporting documents, including information on how to interpret the SHMI, are available on the SHMI homepage (see Related Links).

Based on a comparison of coronavirus deaths in 210 countries relative to their population, Peru had the most losses to COVID-19 up until July 13, 2022. As of the same date, the virus had infected over 557.8 million people worldwide, and the number of deaths had totaled more than 6.3 million. Note, however, that COVID-19 test rates can vary per country. Additionally, big differences show up between countries when combining the number of deaths against confirmed COVID-19 cases. The source seemingly does not differentiate between "the Wuhan strain" (2019-nCOV) of COVID-19, "the Kent mutation" (B.1.1.7) that appeared in the UK in late 2020, the 2021 Delta variant (B.1.617.2) from India or the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) from South Africa.

The difficulties of death figures

This table aims to provide a complete picture on the topic, but it very much relies on data that has become more difficult to compare. As the coronavirus pandemic developed across the world, countries already used different methods to count fatalities, and they sometimes changed them during the course of the pandemic. On April 16, for example, the Chinese city of Wuhan added a 50 percent increase in their death figures to account for community deaths. These deaths occurred outside of hospitals and went unaccounted for so far. The state of New York did something similar two days before, revising their figures with 3,700 new deaths as they started to include “assumed” coronavirus victims. The United Kingdom started counting deaths in care homes and private households on April 29, adjusting their number with about 5,000 new deaths (which were corrected lowered again by the same amount on August 18). This makes an already difficult comparison even more difficult. Belgium, for example, counts suspected coronavirus deaths in their figures, whereas other countries have not done that (yet). This means two things. First, it could have a big impact on both current as well as future figures. On April 16 already, UK health experts stated that if their numbers were corrected for community deaths like in Wuhan, the UK number would change from 205 to “above 300”. This is exactly what happened two weeks later. Second, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which countries already have “revised” numbers (like Belgium, Wuhan or New York) and which ones do not. One work-around could be to look at (freely accessible) timelines that track the reported daily increase of deaths in certain countries. Several of these are available on our platform, such as for Belgium, Italy and Sweden. A sudden large increase might be an indicator that the domestic sources changed their methodology.

Where are these numbers coming from?

The numbers shown here were collected by Johns Hopkins University, a source that manually checks the data with domestic health authorities. For the majority of countries, this is from national authorities. In some cases, like China, the United States, Canada or Australia, city reports or other various state authorities were consulted. In this statistic, these separately reported numbers were put together. For more information or other freely accessible content, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Annual data on death registrations by area of usual residence in the UK. Summary tables including age-standardised mortality rates.

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), by local authority, health board and place of death in the latest weeks for which data are available. The occurrence tabs in the 2021 edition of this dataset were updated for the last time on 25 October 2022.

Number of deaths registered each month by area of usual residence for England and Wales, by region, county, health authorities, local and unitary authority, and London borough.

In England and Wales, the definition of suicide is a death with an underlying cause of intentional self-harm or an injury or poisoning with undetermined intent. In 2022, there were approximately 5,600 suicides in the UK, an increase from the previous year. Vulnerable groups The suicide rate among men in the UK in 2022 was over three times higher than for women, the figures being 16.4 per 100,000 population for men compared to 5.4 for women. Additionally, the age group with the highest rate of suicide was for those aged 50 to 54 years at 15.3 deaths per 100,000. Mental health in the UK There has been an increase in the number of workers in Great Britain suffering from stress, depression or anxiety. Resulting in almost 875 thousand workers reporting to be suffering from these work-related issues in 2022/23. Additionally, five percent of the British population consult with a mental health professional at least twice a year.

This is the number of business deaths in the area for the quarter. Business closures are those removed from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). A business is removed from the IDBR if its turnover and employment are zero for several periods, or if the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is notified that the business has ceased trading through an administrative or survey source.

An enterprise can be defined as the smallest combination of legal units that is an organisational unit producing goods or services, that benefits from a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making, especially for the allocation of its current resources. An enterprise carries out one or more activities at one or more locations. An enterprise may also be a sole legal unit.

For business closures, the registration process can take a little longer because the death of a business may be long and complex. The effective death of a business may occur several months before its actual death from a legal perspective. A business is removed from the IDBR if information from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), ONS business surveys, or Companies House indicates it is no longer active.

An unspecified geography category has been introduced to deal with the distorting effect of multiple registrations at the same site. These apply where there are 250 plus creations or closures at the same postcode. Any creations or closures that happen at one of these postcodes are taken out of their geography and placed into the unspecified category. These cases still count towards the UK totals and may account for up to 4 per cent of the overall total.

Figures for each period are rounded independently to the nearest 5 using controlled rounding. The ONS statistics presented are "Experimental Statistics", so care needs to be taken when interpreting them. Care should be taken interpreting figures for a single period, therefore the annual business demography publication is a more accurate reflection of business births and deaths.

Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

Age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), non-COVID-19 deaths and all deaths by vaccination status, broken down by age group.

Provisional counts of deaths in care homes caused by coronavirus (COVID-19) by local authority. Published by the Office for National Statistics and Care Quality Commission.

Provisional rate and number of suicide deaths registered in England per quarter. Includes 2001 to 2023 registrations and provisional data for Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) to Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024. These are official statistics in development.

Period life expectancy by age and sex for the UK. Each national life table is based on population estimates, births and deaths for a period of three consecutive years. Tables are published annually.

On March 4, 2020, the first death as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19) was recorded in the United Kingdom (UK). The number of deaths in the UK has increased significantly since then. As of January 13, 2023, the number of confirmed deaths due to coronavirus in the UK amounted to 202,157. On January 21, 2021, 1,370 deaths were recorded, which was the highest total in single day in the UK since the outbreak began.

Number of deaths among highest in Europe
The UK has had the highest number of deaths from coronavirus in western Europe. In terms of rate of coronavirus deaths, the UK has recorded 297.8 deaths per 100,000 population.

Cases in the UK The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK was 24,243,393 as of January 13, 2023. The South East has the highest number of first-episode confirmed cases of the virus in the UK with 3,123,050 cases, while London and the North West have 2,912,859 and 2,580,090 confirmed cases respectively. As of January 16, the UK has had 50 new cases per 100,000 in the last seven days.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Potential working years of life lost (PWYLL) due to alcohol-related conditions, ages 16-64, directly age-standardised per 100,000 population.

Rationale Alcohol consumption is a contributing factor to hospital admissions and deaths from a diverse range of conditions. The Government has said that everyone has a role to play in reducing the harmful use of alcohol - this indicator is one of the key contributions by the Government (and the Department of Health and Social Care) to promote measurable, evidence-based prevention activities at a local level, and supports the national ambitions to reduce harm set out in the Government's Alcohol Strategy. This ambition is part of the monitoring arrangements for the Responsibility Deal Alcohol Network. Alcohol-related deaths can be reduced through local interventions to reduce alcohol misuse and harm.

Years of life lost is a measure of premature mortality. The purpose of this measure is to estimate the length of time a person would have lived had they not died prematurely. As the calculation includes the age at which death occurs, it is an attempt to quantify the burden on society from the specified cause of mortality. Alcohol-related deaths often occur at relatively young ages. One of the ways to consider the full impact of alcohol on both the individual and wider society is to look at how many working years are lost each year due to premature death as a result of alcohol.

To enable comparisons between areas and over time, PWYLL rates are age-standardised to represent the PWYLL if each area had the same population structure as the 2013 European Standard Population (ESP). PWYLL rates are presented as years of life lost per 100,000 population.

Definition of numerator The number of years between a death due to alcohol-related conditions in those aged 16 to 64 years and the age of 65 years. Deaths from alcohol-related conditions are extracted and assigned an alcohol attributable fraction based on underlying cause of death (and all cause of deaths fields for the conditions: ethanol poisoning, methanol poisoning, toxic effect of alcohol). Mortality data includes all deaths registered in the calendar year where the local authority of usual residence of the deceased is one of the English geographies and an alcohol attributable diagnosis is given as the underlying cause of death.

After application of the alcohol-attributable fractions, the number of deaths at each age between 16 and 64 is summed, multiplied by the years remaining to 65, and then aggregated into quinary age bands.

References:

PHE (2020) Alcohol-attributable fractions for England: an update https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/alcohol-attributable-fractions-for-england-an-update

Definition of denominator ONS Mid-Year Population Estimates aggregated into quinary age bands.

Caveats There is the potential for the underlying cause of death to be incorrectly attributed on the death certificate and the cause of death misclassified. Alcohol-attributable fractions were not available for children. Conditions where low levels of alcohol consumption are protective (have a negative alcohol-attributable fraction) are not included in the calculation of the indicator.

Where the observed total number of deaths is less than 10, the rates have been suppressed as there are too few deaths to calculate PWYLL directly standardised rates reliably. The cut off has been reduced from 25, following research commissioned by PHE and in preparation for publication which shows DSRs and their confidence intervals are robust whenever the count is at least 10.

The confidence intervals do not take into account the uncertainty involved in the calculation of the AAFs – that is, the proportion of deaths that are caused by alcohol and the alcohol consumption prevalence that are included in the AAF formula are only an estimate and so include uncertainty. The confidence intervals published here are based only on the observed number of deaths and do not account for this uncertainty in the calculation of attributable fraction - as such the intervals may be too narrow.