FOI REF: FOI-2024-1900
You asked
Please can you advise the delay in releasing the 2022 baby names data?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The next publication of our Births Characteristics bulletin will include and additional table of names of babies born in 2022 in England and Wales. This is planned for publication in May 2024.
Our annual publications follow a yearly cycle, where certain statistical bulletins need to be published before others. For instance, our Births in England and Wales bulletin must be published before Births Characteristics bulletin, as they use the same data, but the latter contains additional breakdowns by specific characteristics. Baby names in England and Wales are normally published few months after Births in England and Wales bulletin.
In the last year, mid-year population estimates, which are needed for producing some of our bulletin, were published on 23 November 2023, which was later than usual summer publication. Because of that, publications relaying on this data were also published later – e.g. Deaths registered in England and Wales:2022 were published in December 2023 instead of July 2023 and we are publishing Births in England and Wales:2022 (refreshed populations) on 23 February 2024 instead of August 2023. This has knock-on effect on other publications, which is why Baby names data has not been published yet.
We are making every effort to publish this output on 17 May 2024. This date has not been finalised yet, but we hope to do that in the coming 2 weeks.
Please continue to track the finalised date on our release calendar.