From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
It has long been known that many more people in the UK die in winter months than at other times of year. It has never been a secret.
Year after year, the ONS, Office for National Statistics, published the data to prove it.
That is until 2022, when the annual publications abruptly ended, without any official explanation as far as I am aware. It took a Freedom of Information request to winkle out the real story – this is the ONS response in February 2026 to that FOI:
You asked
I would like to request the following recorded information held by the Office for National Statistics:
The total number of excess winter deaths (or excess winter mortality figure) in England and Wales for the winter period 2024/25 (defined as December 2024 to March 2025, or the standard ONS winter definition if different).
If available as part of the above or separately recorded, a breakdown of these excess winter deaths by age group, particularly for those aged 65 and over (or State Pension age / older persons / OAPs equivalent).
Any provisional, estimated, or final figures for cold-related mortality (or deaths attributable to cold weather / low temperatures) in the UK (or England and Wales) during the winter of 2024/25, including any modelling, estimates, or direct counts if held.
If the full annual excess winter mortality bulletin or dataset covering winter 2024/25 has not yet been published, please provide:
The current expected publication date or release schedule for this data.
Any provisional or interim figures, weekly/monthly breakdowns, or related surveillance data already held that indicate excess mortality during the relevant winter months.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Previously published annual data on excess winter mortality from 1950 to 2022 are available in our Winter mortality in England and Wales Statistical bulletins, using the excess winter deaths (EWD) and excess winter mortality index (EWMI) measures. However, this release was discontinued following the consultation that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) ran with the Department for Health and Social Care (including the Office for Health Improvements and Disparities), NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and NHS England. This was because of limitations with the methodology used to produce these measures.
The UKHSA published a Cold mortality monitoring report, England: winter 2024 to 2025 annual report on 18 February 2026 at 9:30am. This report provides the first national estimates of mortality associated with low temperatures during cold weather episodes in England over the winter season. These results are intended to inform public health preparedness and support action to reduce health impacts during periods of cold weather in England.
Limitations with the methodology? That is ridiculous and they are gaslighting the public. The ONS methodology was both simple and unarguable. This is how they defined it:
There is no need for complicated statistics.
The consultation the ONS speak of was clearly a political stitch-up from the start, directed by the NHS and the UKHSA. It was the latter, you may recall, who published the fake heatwave death data recently.
The undeniable fact that many more people die in winter months has long been an embarrassment to the Government’s Climate Agenda. Attempts to scare the public about the health implications of a warmer climate are invariably met with the response that a warmer climate will save lives overall. Meanwhile, silly amber alerts from the Met Office about a bit of sunny weather are routinely mocked and ignored with thousands flocking to the beaches instead.
So, how to get rid of this pesky excess winter death data? Simples – just stop publishing it.
Instead, as the ONS note, we must now rely on the UKHSA, the Government’s UK Health Security Agency, to provide us with the information. And here is their first annual bulletin, published in February 2026:
Miraculously, excess winter deaths have fallen from tens of thousands to just 2544!
How has this been achieved?
Instead of analysing mortality throughout the whole of the winter, they have simply looked at just a few days when it was extremely cold.
As I revealed earlier this month, it was the UKHSA that falsely claimed 1504 died last summer from the heat. In other words, according to the UKHSA, roughly the same number of people die from heat as die from cold every year.
Although the ONS no longer publish the excess death data, the monthly mortality statistics on which it is based is still available. Using exactly the same methodology as the ONS, I can confirm that the winter excess deaths in 2024/25 totalled 27,540. Not the 2,544 that the UKHSA would like you to believe.
According to the ONS, they are “the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and its recognised national statistical institute”.
If they are truly “independent”, why have they bowed the knee to Government demands to cease the publication of politically inconvenient statistics?
It’s apparent that Watt’s Up could provide the continuing statistic that the UK government refuses to reveal. I suggest, if possible, that it become a regular feature, provided via X, Facebook, etc., as well as the website. It could not possibly violate any existing British law.
Canada’s CBC is also good at downplaying or outright concealing climate related facts that run counter to its alarmist agenda. It frequently makes a big deal out of hot spells implying that fossil fuel use will only increase these in summer; yet when cold periods occur during winter months, it takes a ho-hum attitude as if to say what else can be expected.
You could just consult the document mentioned in the ONS reply.
Table 3 Excess winter deaths in England since 2022
Winter EWD EWMI
2022–23 35,482 20.4%
2023–24 15,721 9.1%
2024–25 25,832 15.3%
When facts don’t suit your aims, just outright lie and obfuscate.
When you control the data you control the narrative.
And when people refuse to believe the narrative you control nothing. More and more people are just refusing to believe any of it.
-George Orwell
Orwell and also appearing as a German accented voice sample on Public Enemy’s 1990 Classic album “Fear of a Black Planet”.
There is something changing in the climate of consciousness on this planet today.
PE actually had several climate change (then called Global Warming) and ozone layer references in their music.
“According to the ONS, they are “the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and its recognised national statistical institute”.”
I guess that means that they were, once upon-a-twice, the largest independent producer of official statistics. 😉
During the pandemic, we found out (here in the US at least) that “excess deaths” were being blamed on Covid-19, even when it was perfectly clear that the virus had nothing to do with it. You could have passed away in an emergency room from a heart attack or a gunshot wound to the chest, but if you happened to test positive for the virus, then they counted it as a Covid death. The problems with any excess death claims is in the attribution. Still, it’s obvious that most deaths that can be correlated to temperature or seasonality in the Northern Hemisphere are connected with cold. Road accidents, heart attacks from shoveling snow, and the big one, carbon monoxide poisoning (there’s your real evil carbon threat).
When everyone person in Britain is supported, in preference to your own people, what else can you expect?
My best guess is that they will continue to NOT publish Excess Winter Death Data until after it falls below the Excess Summer Death rate thereby bolstering their case that Climate Change Heat is causing more excess deaths.
Another example of data control.
When the numbers do not support the preferred narrative they simply stop providing the numbers.
I suggest that at least some of the winter deaths are due to people being more depressed in winter. Especially in nations like the UK and the Scandinavian nations which have short daylight hours in winter.
Cold weather kills at a much higher rate than hot weather. Period. Full stop.
Good. The excess winter death figures were too simplistic.
Comparing winter deaths with the figures for the rest if the year means you can’t tell if a drop in the winter deaths was due to a sudden rise in non-winter deaths or due to an actual fall in the winter deaths. And the figures take no notice of changes in population size and distribution.
G*d forbid that statistics are presented so regular people can understand them. Gotta massage the data, average then average again (then average once more) then anomalize then use some unverified, sui generis statistical technique to show that “it’s worse than we thought.”
I said nothing about presentation. I doubt many “regular people” know what the Excess Winter Death figures are, let alone how they are calculated.
In other words…Cook the Books then Karlize the outcome
Too simplistic? Have you compared the correlation between various metrics so that you can speak quantitatively instead of offering a subjective opinion? An easy solution to your complaint about population size, which rarely changes significantly year to year, is to use a ratio instead of a difference. That is, use the ratio of Winter deaths to non-Winter deaths for a calendar year. If you think about it I’m sure that you can come up with other metrics such as the difference between Winter deaths and non-Winter deaths divided by the sum of Winter and non-Winter deaths, appropriately called the normalized-difference Winter death index.
“Too simplistic?”
That’s my subjective opinion, yes. Maybe “too” is a bit strong, but they could be improved.
“An easy solution to your complaint about population size, …, is to use a ratio instead of a difference.”
That’s what the “excess winter mortality index” does. But it’s not what Homewood is complaining about, and it still has the same problem of being affected by high mortality outside winter months.
There are damn few outfits that can stay in business while lying, government is one of them.
I have seen this argument for years, more deaths in winter than summer. This happens in areas of the world where the winter temp is over 15C, like India and Malaysia.
The bottom line is that people are more indoors in the winter and things like flu etc cause deaths. There are few deaths from hypothermia, cold itself. I guess most people can put a sweater on if they need one.
In the summer it’s another story; most the excess deaths are hyperthermia. Heat itself.