Welcome to The Briercliffe Society Forum

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page14568.asp

The Petition
"We received a petition asking:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Mandate the electronic indexing and free public searching thereof of locally held records of Birth, Marriage and Death at Register Offices across England and Wales."

Details of Petition:

"Local Register Offices (part of Local Government) are the primary contact for people wanting copies of Birth, Marriage or Death certificates. GRO Southport is a secondary contact having photocopies of the primary locally held registers. As such, Local Register Offices hold a mine of information for UK residents and Family Historians alike. These records are found and managed almost universally by old hand written indexes in cloth bound books and ledgers. While the public can legally access the indexes in person at each office, this mode of access is unacceptable in this day and age. Also, that any modern day business can still work like this in the 21st century is appalling. This petition seeks support to force local Register Offices to electronically index their records from 1837 to 2007 when a new on-line electronic registration system was introduced. While some areas have already opted to do this under the auspices of the UKBMD umbrella, and publish data on freely searchable web databases, other areas show no such inclination. This petition seeks to mandate that action.""

The Government response

"The Government considers it a matter for individual local authorities to determine how they make publicly available index information relating to birth, death and marriage registrations. The Government does not propose to seek a change in the law to force local authorities to make index information available online or by other electronic means.

The General Register Office (GRO) is a Government body supporting the Registrar General for England and Wales. GRO receives and maintains a copy of every registration of birth, death and marriage registered throughout England and Wales, and is in the process of producing a digitised copy of all records dating back to 1837 when registration became a statutory requirement. The GRO will create a digitised index to the registrations and hopes within the next two years to have the made its GRO index available online for free public access."

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

Oh well,I suppose that is better than nothing.Just have to wait 2 years until it happens.I wonder if it will be a free service--------somehow I doubt it.

Have just re read that,it is only an index that they are making available.That is not a lot of use is it??

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David
Genealogists do it in the library.