The time taken to register a death.

This article analyses delays in the registration of death and discusses their effect on mortality statistics. It is shown that the longest delays arise when deaths are the subject of a coroner's inquest, in particular deaths in road traffic accidents. These delays mean that it may be many months before an acceptable proportion of deaths occurring in a year have been registered, so affecting how early a reliable extract of annual data can be taken. It also shows that the difference in the number of deaths occurring and the number registered in a year is strongly influenced by the weekdays on which holidays fall at the New Year.