£25 for a death certificate ?

[Olde Crone Holden]

As far as I am aware, local registration offices can charge whatever they like for the service surrounding the issue of a certicate and many offices now have a minimum research charge where the issue requires some kind of search. Austerity! Others have opted not to issue historical certs at all.

To be fair....why should the ordinary council tax payer fund the search for anyone's certificates?

OC

[Guy]

As far as I am aware, local registration offices can charge whatever they like for the service surrounding the issue of a certicate and many offices now have a minimum research charge where the issue requires some kind of search. Austerity! Others have opted not to issue historical certs at all.

To be fair....why should the ordinary council tax payer fund the search for anyone's certificates?

OC

Because that is the reason the registrars offices were set up.
If they cannot comply with their legal obligations they should be shut down and the Superintendent Registrars sacked.
The fee is £10
Cheers
Guy

[Olde Crone Holden]

Guy

Registration offices were set up so that people could fulfil their legal obligation to register an event. It is perfectly proper that that should be funded from the public purse.

What I am saying is that SEARCHES for historical certificates which are not a record of one's own life events should not be funded from the public purse. £10 is the price of the certificate, not the price of the search - the search has historically been free at local ROs but I see no reason why it should be free to people who are pursuing a hobby in these times of council spending cuts.

OC

[Guy]

Guy

Registration offices were set up so that people could fulfil their legal obligation to register an event. It is perfectly proper that that should be funded from the public purse.

What I am saying is that SEARCHES for historical certificates which are not a record of one's own life events should not be funded from the public purse. £10 is the price of the certificate, not the price of the search - the search has historically been free at local ROs but I see no reason why it should be free to people who are pursuing a hobby in these times of council spending cuts.

OC

OC the reason civil registration was set up was because church registers did not supply enough information to allow pedigree research to be carried out.
It was accepted that members of the CoE could in most cases trace their heritage but Dissenters were at a disadvantage as their records did not have the legal authority bestowed on Parish Registers.

For example as the Attorney General pointed out in the second reading of the Registration of Births Bill (HC Deb 15 April 1836 vol 32 cc1087-92).

“The Attorney General
felt that the measure would be not merely a benefit to the Dissenters, but would be found to be equally a benefit to the members of the Church of England. With respect to registration at present, as selected to the members of the Church of England, it was exceedingly imperfect. There was no registration of deaths—they merely had a registration of burials. It was impossible, on this account, to find evidence of descent with any certainty beyond two generations, and the consequence was, that this uncertainty led to great litigation and expense. “


There is a general search fee that allows for 6 hours of searches to be made in a register, however superintendent registrars are supposed to search 2 years either side of a suggested date when a certificate is purchased and no precise date is known.

Cheers
Guy

[Darksecretz]

it might be that they have a system [much like Nottingham] they will charge:

Please note we do not take orders over the telephone for duplicate certificates.

In person
The Register Office
The Council House
Old Market Square
Nottingham
NG1 2DT

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 9.00am to 4.30pm

We offer the following services if you visit us at the Register Office:

Gold Service: Certificate after 1 hour - £30
Silver Service: Certificate next working day - £20
Bronze Service: Certificate after 3 working days - £15 (£16 if sent to you by post)
Standard Service: Certificate after 5 working days - £10 (£11 if sent to you by post)
UK First Class Post plus £1.00
European Postage plus £1.50
Worldwide Postage plus £2.00

I refuse to be bamboozled into this price, I do know that if you go to say Mansfield that they will charge you £10 no matter which cert you order!..

[JLB]

It was UK Document Services. I just had an email from them.It was only because they were asking so much that I queried it.Just shows how people can get caught out though.

[AntonyM]

The fees for a certificate from a local registration office are fixed by GRO - currently they are £4 at time of registration, £7 from an open register, £10 from a closed register ( which will be 99.9% of research enquiries). They cannot vary that - however they can offer express services, additional printing options and and add postage charges at additional cost, as shown in the above example.

As we know there are a growing number of 3rd party websites, like UK Document Services, offering perfectly legal certificate supply services who just forward requests on to GRO and adding on a large profit for themselves in the process - Ancestry being another prime example.

Certainly the registration service I worked in until recently (Buckinghamshire) was expected to cover it's own running costs and not be reliant on public funding. The income from certificates forms a part of that funding, although the vast bulk comes from wedding fees. The certificate desk staff in my office were extremely helpful and very knowledgeable and would often go much further than they really should to help people trace the correct entry before producing a certificate ( including checking father's names and occupations, creating certificates by photocopying the original register entry if possible or providing tracings of signatures for comparison) and probably 9 out of 10 of requests would be sent out the same day , whether people chose the express service or not !

Sadly it is true many offices are short staffed these days and providing historical certificates is not their main focus, but if possible I do tend to use local offices more than GRO if I can.

[Glen in Tinsel Knickers]

Always look at the registrars pages on the council website, all will have contact details for the offices within their area, many also have pages giving info about the how and why of ordering historic certificates together with pricing information.


Top results on google searches are usually sponsored links to 3rd party suppliers who then as middlemen to supply certs, (most often obtained from the GRO anyway).

I spotted a welfare to work company where using a 3rd party supplier at over £80 each for clients needing certs for job, a quick word with the manager and they were using the GRO standard service saving a fortune in the process. The reason for their overspend being they hit the first result on google searches and never went into the main results.

[Guy]

it might be that they have a system [much like Nottingham] they will charge:

Please note we do not take orders over the telephone for duplicate certificates.

In person
The Register Office
The Council House
Old Market Square
Nottingham
NG1 2DT

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 9.00am to 4.30pm

We offer the following services if you visit us at the Register Office:

Gold Service: Certificate after 1 hour - £30
Silver Service: Certificate next working day - £20
Bronze Service: Certificate after 3 working days - £15 (£16 if sent to you by post)
Standard Service: Certificate after 5 working days - £10 (£11 if sent to you by post)
UK First Class Post plus £1.00
European Postage plus £1.50
Worldwide Postage plus £2.00

I refuse to be bamboozled into this price, I do know that if you go to say Mansfield that they will charge you £10 no matter which cert you order!..

Yes many offices offer such illegal services.
Only the GRO is allowed to offer a priority service by law.
When a local Registrar or a Superintendent Registrar offer such a service they are in breach of the law as they are delaying the production of another certificate.

The fees are set out by Statutory Instrument and are not open to change at the whim of the office concerned.
The 2014 SI No. 1790 is available at

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1790/article/2/made

Cheers
Guy

[Olde Crone Holden]

Guy

I know why civil registration was set up. The reason why local register offices were set up was so that people could register their life events LOCALLY! I hope that your suggestion that local ROs be closed down and Superintendant Registrars be sacked was a tongue in cheek one.

Almost every certificate I have has been obtained from a local RO and the EXTRA MILE has always been travelled at no extra cost, as Antony describes. People tend to forget that the GRO is merely a repository of secondary records and that if you use the automated ordering system (as nearly everyone does) then you get an automated service with no personal input or interest from the several clerks who are producing your certificate.

There is a place in genealogy for both systems. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice!

OC