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The General Register Office (GRO) is that part of the government
Government

Government is the body within any organization that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws, regulations, or rules. Typically, the government refers to a civil government -- local, provincial, or national -- but commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also administered by governing bodies....
 of England and Wales
England and Wales

England and Wales is a legal unit within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom....
 that deals with the civil registration
Civil registration

Civil registration is the system with which a government records the vital events of its citizens. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create legal documents that are used to establish and protect the civil rights of individuals....
 of births
Childbirth

Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the delivery of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus. The process of normal human childbirth is categorized in three stages of labour: the shortening and dilation of the cervix, descent and delivery of the infant, and delivery of the placenta.....
 (including stillbirth
Stillbirth

A stillbirth occurs when a fetus which has death in the uterus or during labor or childbirth, while exiting a woman's human body. The term is often used in distinction to live birth or miscarriage....
s), adoption
Adoption

Adoption is the act of Family law placing a child with a parent or parents other than those to whom they were born. An adoption order has the effect of severing parental responsibilities and rights of the original parent and transferring those responsibilities and rights to the adoptive parent....
s, marriage
Marriage

Marriage is a social, spirituality, or law union of individuals. This union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding and the married status created is sometimes called wedlock....
s and civil partnerships, and death
Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that define a life organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby....
s in both England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 and Wales
Wales

native_name = Cymru|conventional_long_name = Wales|common_name = Wales|image_flag = Flag of Wales 2.svg|national_motto = ...
. (There are equivalent but separate offices for the other parts of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
, respectively Scotland
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
 and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland

conventional_long_name = Northern Ireland|native_name= Tuaisceart ?ireannNorlin Airlann|motto =|image_map = Europe location N-IRL2.png...
.)

The GRO was founded in 1836 under an Act
Act of Parliament

An act of Parliament is a statute wikt:enacted as primary legislation by a national or sub-national parliament. It is broadly equivalent to an act of Congress in the United States....
 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislature in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories....
 (6 & 7 Will. IV cap. 86), and civil registration commenced in 1837.






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The General Register Office (GRO) is that part of the government
Government

Government is the body within any organization that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws, regulations, or rules. Typically, the government refers to a civil government -- local, provincial, or national -- but commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also administered by governing bodies....
 of England and Wales
England and Wales

England and Wales is a legal unit within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom....
 that deals with the civil registration
Civil registration

Civil registration is the system with which a government records the vital events of its citizens. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create legal documents that are used to establish and protect the civil rights of individuals....
 of births
Childbirth

Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the delivery of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus. The process of normal human childbirth is categorized in three stages of labour: the shortening and dilation of the cervix, descent and delivery of the infant, and delivery of the placenta.....
 (including stillbirth
Stillbirth

A stillbirth occurs when a fetus which has death in the uterus or during labor or childbirth, while exiting a woman's human body. The term is often used in distinction to live birth or miscarriage....
s), adoption
Adoption

Adoption is the act of Family law placing a child with a parent or parents other than those to whom they were born. An adoption order has the effect of severing parental responsibilities and rights of the original parent and transferring those responsibilities and rights to the adoptive parent....
s, marriage
Marriage

Marriage is a social, spirituality, or law union of individuals. This union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding and the married status created is sometimes called wedlock....
s and civil partnerships, and death
Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that define a life organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby....
s in both England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 and Wales
Wales

native_name = Cymru|conventional_long_name = Wales|common_name = Wales|image_flag = Flag of Wales 2.svg|national_motto = ...
. (There are equivalent but separate offices for the other parts of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
, respectively Scotland
Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
 and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland

conventional_long_name = Northern Ireland|native_name= Tuaisceart ?ireannNorlin Airlann|motto =|image_map = Europe location N-IRL2.png...
.)

The GRO was founded in 1836 under an Act
Act of Parliament

An act of Parliament is a statute wikt:enacted as primary legislation by a national or sub-national parliament. It is broadly equivalent to an act of Congress in the United States....
 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislature in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories....
 (6 & 7 Will. IV cap. 86), and civil registration commenced in 1837. Its head is the Registrar General
Registrar General

The Registrar General is the Government official responsible for the registration of births, deaths and marriages in England and Wales. There are similar officials in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the Registrar General is properly called the Registrar General for England and Wales....
. Probably the most distinguished person associated with the GRO in the nineteenth century, although he was never its head, was William Farr
William Farr

William Farr was a nineteenth century United Kingdom epidemiologist, regarded as one of the founders of medical statistics....
.

In 1972 the GRO became part of the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys
Office of Population Censuses and Surveys

The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys , was created in May 1970 through the merger of the General Register Office and the Government Social Survey Department....
 (OPCS), with the Registrar General in overall charge. Until then it had had several statistical functions, including the conduct of population censuses and the production of annual population estimates. All these were moved elsewhere within the new organisation. The GRO then became just one division within OPCS, headed by a Deputy Registrar General. Then in 1996 the OPCS, and therefore the GRO, became part of the newly created Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics

The Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
, and the office of Registrar General was merged with that of Head of the Government Statistical Service.

The GRO supplies copies of birth
Birth certificate

A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a child. Outside the United States, the term "birth certificate" refers to a certification of the original birth record....
, marriage
Marriage certificate

In some jurisdictions a marriage certificate is the official record that two people have undertaken a marriage ceremony. In some other jurisdictions, a marriage license serves a dual purpose of granting permission for a marriage to take place and then recording the fact that it has done so....
, civil partnership certificates and death certificate
Death certificate

A death certificate, sometimes medical certificate of the cause of death , is a document issued by a government official such as a registrar of vital statistics that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death....
s, either online, via the Family Records Centre
Family Records Centre

The Family Records Centre provided access to family history research sources mainly for England and Wales. It was administered jointly by the General Register Office and National Archives ....
 or from one of the local register office
Register office

In England and Wales, The Register Office is primarily the local office for the Civil registry of births, deaths and marriages , and for the conducting of civil marriages....
s that act on behalf of the GRO.

Becoming part of IPS

On 1 April 2008, the General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) became a subsidiary of the Identity and Passport Service
Identity and Passport Service

The is an executive agency of the Home Office in the United Kingdom which became operational on 1 April 2006 after the passing of the British national identity card....
 (IPS). The decision to make the transfer of GRO to IPS was finalised following the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review. As such IPS and the Home Office
Home Office

The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security and order. As such it is responsible for the police, United Kingdom Borders Agency and MI5....
 is the natural home for GRO. The move follows changes to make Office of National Statistics more independent of Government, which means ONS will no longer be responsible for the registration role it currently holds.

Digitisation of Vital Events (DoVE)

A project to digitise the GRO's records of birth, marriage and death was initiated in 2005. Implementation of the project was outsourced
Outsourcing

Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the core competence of a particular business, or to make more efficient...
 to Siemens IT Solutions and Services in a three-year contract which expired at the end of July 2008. The process of scanning
Image scanning

Document scanning or image scanning is the action or process of converting text and graphic paper documents, photographic film, photographic paper or other files to digital images....
, digitising
Digitizing

Digitizing or digitization is representing an Object , , document or a Signal by a discrete set of its points or sample s. The result is called "digital group representation" or, more specifically, a "digital image", for the object, and "digital form", for the signal....
 and indexing suffered severe delays, with only (roughly) half the records delivered by the end of the contract period. By mutual agreement between the IPS and Siemens, the contract will not be extended. Siemens will, however, complete the digitisation of birth and death records up to 1934 and 1957 respectively.

The records that have been digitised – over 130 million of them – form part of a system (called EAGLE, for "Electronic Access to GRO Legacy Events ") which is used within the GRO to fulfil requests for certificates from the general public. A different system, known as MAGPIE ("MultiAccess to GRO Public Index of Events"), was intended to make the indexes available to the public via a website. The launch of this service depends on the completion of DoVE, and hence is subject to a presently unknown delay.

The GRO and IPS are reviewing the digitisation project and will then decide how to complete the implementation. They state that they "remain committed to delivering the project to digitise Births, Deaths and Marriage records".

Smedley Hydro

The GRO is located at Smedley Hydro in Southport
Southport

Southport is a seaside resort within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, in Merseyside, England. The town is located on the Irish Sea coast, to the north of Liverpool and west-southwest of Preston....
, a former Hydropathic Hotel that has since been converted into offices for the GRO and NHS The Information Centre, formally the NHS Central Register.

Registrars General

  • Thomas Henry Lister
    Thomas Henry Lister

    Thomas Henry Lister was an England novelist and Registrar General....
    , 1836-1842
  • George Graham, 1842-1880
  • Brydges P. Henniker, 1880-1900
  • Reginald McLeod, 1900-1902
  • William Cospatrick Dunbar, 1902-1909
  • Bernard Mallet
    Bernard Mallet

    Sir Bernard Mallet Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath was a UK civil servant. He was the son of Sir Louis Mallet. He was Registrar General and President of the Royal Statistical Society....
    , 1909-1920
  • Sylvanus Percival Vivian
    Sylvanus Percival Vivian

    Sir Sylvanus Percival Vivian was the 7th Registrar General of the United Kingdom , and the longest serving Registrar General after George Graham....
    , 1920-1945
Source:


See also

  • General Register Office for Northern Ireland
  • General Register Office for Scotland
    General Register Office for Scotland

    The General Register Office for Scotland is a non-ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administers the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adoptions in Scotland....


External links