Dear Ed,

We are writing regarding the publication of ONS statistics on deaths of care home residents in England and Wales. These official statistics in development were last published in November 2023. The ONS conducted a joint consultation at the end of 2023 which included a proposal to cease publication of these statistics, while remaining open to re-establishing them in the future. Most respondents to the consultation asked for the statistics to continue being produced.

However, following a further review of these statistics, the ONS will be going ahead with plans to cease publishing these statistics. The reasons for this decision are:

• Difficulties in producing accurate population estimates of care home residents for the calculation of age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs): in previous releases, care home population numbers from Census 2021 have been used to calculate ASMRs. The further away we move from 2021 Census, the less accurate they become, so development work is needed to investigate alternative sources of population data.
• There is currently no resource for conducting this methodological development work, and there is no guarantee that an alternative data source will provide a sufficiently accurate estimate of the care home resident population.
• Similar data is published elsewhere: ONS publish figures on deaths that occur in care home settings as part of our annual deaths release and weekly deaths These figures won’t include deaths of care home residents that die in other settings, such as hospitals, but provide a robust measure of deaths that occur in care homes.

We are therefore requesting approval to close the previous OSR assessment of these statistics that was conducted in 2022. We will continue to apply the high-level principles identified in your assessment to other mortality statistics produced by ONS. This will ensure that we engage with a wide range of stakeholders, improve granularity and commentary, publish appropriate quality information, and consider forms of external assurance.

Yours sincerely

Rachel Skentelbery

Deputy Head of Profession for Statistics, ONS

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Related

Ed Humpherson to Rachel Skentelbery: Assessment of Deaths in the Care Sector statistics (November 2025)