Alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom, 2011

This annual bulletin presents alcohol-related death figures and age-standardised rates for the UK, England, Wales, and regions of England for 2011. This updates the previous release ‘Alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom, 2010’. Data for Scotland and Northern Ireland are published separately; see the ‘Context’ section for details. There were 8,748 alcohol-related deaths in the UK in 2011, a decrease of 42 deaths on the number recorded in 2010 (8,790). This fall in the number of deaths has reduced the alcohol-related death rate from 12.9 per 100,000 population in 2010 to 12.6 per 100,000 population in 2011.

For both sexes, age-specific alcohol-related death rates in the UK were lowest among those less than 30 years old. For those aged 30 and over, males were significantly more likely than females to die of alcohol-related causes. For both sexes the number of alcohol-related deaths was highest for those aged 55 to 59, with 838 deaths among males (46.9 per 100,000 population) and 411 among females (22.4 per 100,000 population).

The trend in alcohol-related death rates has remained relatively stable over the last ten years for females across all age-standardised age groups. In contrast, the alcohol-related death rate trend has shown greater fluctuation for males, particularly in the last three years. However, there were no significant changes in rates across all age groups for both males and females between 2010 and 2011.

Across the regions of England there was significant geographical variation in alcohol-related death rates. In 2011, rates for males were highest in the North West (22.9 per 100,000 population) and lowest in the East of England (11.8 per 100,000 population). For females, rates were highest in the North West (10.8 per 100,000) and lowest in London (5.3 per 100,000).

Alcohol-related death rates for both males and females have been higher in Wales than in England over the last 10 years. For females, this difference is significant in 2011, with death rates for Females in England at 7.6 deaths per 100,000 population and 9.5 deaths per 100,000 population in Wales. However, there has been steady decline in the number of male deaths in Wales in each of the last three years. Consequently, while death rates for males remain higher in Wales than England, with 17.0 and 15.9 deaths per 100,000 population respectively, the difference is no longer significant. The fall in death rates among males in Wales has contributed to the overall decrease in alcohol-related death rates in the UK.

Alcohol-related death figures for the UK, England, Wales and the regions of England for 2002 to 2011 are presented in Tables 1 and 2 for males and Tables 3 and 4 for females.


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