Federation Of Family History Societies

Increased fees for registration services at the General Register Office (England and Wales) and at Local Registration Services

 

We have received advanced notification of increased fees coming into force from 6 April for people ordering birth, marriage and death certificates from the GRO.

The standard fee will rise from £7.00 to £9.25.  This is an increase of just over 32%.

The good news is that this new standard rate will also apply where the reference is not known or where the order is not placed online; representing a reduction in the fee.

Full details can be seen in the press release at http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1569.htm.

The fee for all priority orders will become £23.40.  This represents a small increase from £23.00 where the order is made online quoting the reference.  Where no reference is known or where the order is not placed online there will be a reduction compared to the current fee.

The fee for a certificate issued by a Superintendent Registrar will increase from £7.00 to £9.00.  Details of other fees to be charged by the Local Registration Service are contained in the press release referred to above.

In the light of recent comments about additional administration fees being charged by some local offices, it is strange that the new fee of £9.00 is less than the new fee to be charged by the GRO.  I have heard from one Registration Service manager explaining the need for charging more than the current fee of £7.00.  He wrote “The arrangement of records at local offices is very different to those of GRO.  For instance the GRO ref is of no use. Similarly marriage certificate requests involve searching in each church - there are no centralized indexes. Many requests (often rambling) are accompanied by the usual (must be son of …) which means after an extensive search, we are unable to issue the certificate, and return the fee, despite considerable time being wasted.”

I suspect we have not heard the last about this.

 

Roger Lewry
FFHS Archives Liaison

2 March 2010