Genealogy Chat

Just ordered 2 certificates and see that the fee is going up to £9.25 from April. I will have to be quick and order any that I need !
Elaine

Yes, that's correct. There have been a couple of threads on this already.

You would have thought that they might have considered reducing the fees to encourage people to order more.
Raising the fees will just put people off.

Unfortunately the GRO isn't there just to issue certs to us genealogists

Gordon Brown decreed some while back that the GRO in common with the Passport Office, of which it now is part, must be self financing, with no support from the taxpayer. The last rise was in 2003 so we are perhaps lucky to have gone for so long without seeing an increase.

At under £10 it is still cheaper than many other countries charge.

Some of the prices have actually gone down. If you order without the GRO reference numbers it costs the same now as with the reference (which is cheaper than it used to be). I think it is also now cheaper than it was to order by priority post. This is the first increase in prices since I started researching in 2003, so I don't think it's too bad really. Even though family history seems expensive with the cost of subscriptions to sites and certificates etc., if you work out what you might spend on other hobbies it's not too bad really.

Kath. x

Kath it may be cheaper to order without the reference after the increase, but have you noted the standard delivery time?
Up to 15 days!!!!

I personally think they should have digitised all the cerftificates as with Scotlands People. This way we can have instant access, it would be far more cost effective for the GRO doing away with alot of request being sent by post and more productive for us amatuer genealogists

It would be interesting to know which is the most profitable.
Scotlandspeople only works out at about £1 per certificate but as it is completely online, only backroom staff are required.
With GRO I still imagine that they have an army of clerks sat on high stools writing with quills and that the storage area looks like the repository on Indiana Jones.
Time to get Scottish records = 15 seconds
Time to get GRO records = 15 days

I am happy to spend all evening searching for my Scottish ancestors and don't think twice about pressing the button. Whenever I need an English certificate I think twice about it and generally see if I can get the information by other means. I am sure it puts people off.

Barbara,

The digitisation program actually started a few years ago but was put on hold when the budget originally allocated was exhausted. There are some details on their website

http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1090.htm

With the gro references, I ordered a selection of BMD on 3 Mar. EDDespatch was 9 Mar, and they arrived 11 Mar.

They do take longer when there is high demand, and there have been some Civil Servants strikes over the last week.

I guess we will just have to pay up. I usually limit myself to ordering 1 or 2 a month so that there is not a list of £7's on the credit card statement !!
My husbands parents were Scottish and as someone said previously it is so much cheaper and instant to get certs.

Does anyone know how much it is at the moment for a certificate without the reference numbers?

Thanks Jonesey.

So if the prices for certificates with or without references are going to be the same after the price rise, it should be cheaper to order without reference AFTER the price rise. Is that correct?

Re 15 days to receive certificates, some years ago it took anything up to 6 weeks

Oh well, that's some consolation!!

Thanks again Jonesey.

You are right Jean.

I remember waiting 6 weeks for a marriage certificate to come from the GRO. It was at the time that the first series of "Who Do You Think You Are" was showing on TV and suddenly everyone was trying to find out about their family history.

Kath. x

Yes, that right, the price will go down slightly for orders without the ref.

However, they are withdrawing the reference checking service from 6 April. This will include the withdrawal of the "checking points". facility.

Full details are on here

http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1569.htm

Thanks for the information Inspector Pen.

Having read the information on the link it would seem that a change in England and Wales legislation is needed before we could view the digitised information once the project is completed.

Thankfully I am still researching my Scottish heritage and hopefully when I get back to my English and Welsh ancestry the legislation would have changed bringing us one step closer to online access.

Since the GRO started putting all records onto disc etc, the ref numbers are irrelevant anyway. My sister is a registrar and has ordered me several. She said she did not need the ref numbers as it bore no relation to the way they are stored now. She took name/dob etc .
So really we were all getting the same service, just at different costs. They still have to start from scratch on all requests.