GRO Price Increase Petition

[nigelp]

No, you are correct, it does not add up the true cost is between £15 and £20 per certificate.
If the government does as the petition asks and revues the costs we could find the prices increase sharply.


It is not legal for the GRO to provide information from the civil registers except by certificate.
Perhaps when we get a new government they will have the competence to legally change the law to allow online access.
The present government tried but failed to comply with the law and their attempt was rejected.

Hi Guy,

Where do you obtain or how do you arrive at the figure of between £15 and £20? You may be right although I cannot currently see that the cost for copying, cutting and pasting of an entry and completing a certificate (allowing also for various overheads) would /should be that high bearing in mind that it is undertaken by the GRO on a highly repetitive and large volume basis.

Although it is also my understanding that it is not legal for the GRO to provide information from the civil registers except by certificate what is your understanding of how that conclusion has been reached? Although the GRO is obliged to issue the information by certificate if requested so far I have been unable to find anything which says that it cannot also provide information for certain uses in other formats.

Nigel

[Guy Etchells]

Hi Guy,

Where do you obtain or how do you arrive at the figure of between £15 and £20? You may be right although I cannot currently see that the cost for copying, cutting and pasting of an entry and completing a certificate (allowing also for various overheads) would /should be that high bearing in mind that it is undertaken by the GRO on a highly repetitive and large volume basis.

Although it is also my understanding that it is not legal for the GRO to provide information from the civil registers except by certificate what is your understanding of how that conclusion has been reached? Although the GRO is obliged to issue the information by certificate if requested so far I have been unable to find anything which says that it cannot also provide information for certain uses in other formats.

Nigel

It has been computed from various freely available accounts, FoI requests and staffing levels/wages divided by the released figures of certificate requests.

There is also an allowance made for staff sickness, manual searching, checking and transcribing of those illegible certificates (taken from figures given on a tour of Southport Hydro).

The cost of providing a certificate is not just the costs involved in printing out a form.
There are the basic costs of providing and equipping an office to be considered, plus the additional costs involved in the production of each individual certificate.

This may involve additional staff, or staff manhours diverted from other duties.
You may think it is a highly repetitive and large volume basis but running a similar business producing CDs on demand provides me with a good model to work from.
Cheers
Guy

PS I did not answer your second question regarding supplying certificates.

There is only one way a registrar, superintendent registrar, Registrar General etc. can supply a copy of an entry in a register and that is by a providing certified copy of the entry in the register.
Any copy of an entry supplied is a certified copy and as such the regulated charge has to apply.

Remember a certificate is not a printed piece of paper but a copy of a register entry certified to be a true copy of that entry.
Cheers
Guy

[Sloe Gin]

There is only one way a registrar, superintendent registrar, Registrar General etc. can supply a copy of an entry in a register and that is by a providing certified copy of the entry in the register.

And yet an Archive or Records Office can supply an uncertified copy of an entry from a Parish Register: which in the case of a marriage is the same as the entry in the registrar's register.  It does seem a strange anomaly!

[MUMMYG]

Exactly, and for £1.25 at that.

[nigelp]

There is only one way a registrar, superintendent registrar, Registrar General etc. can supply a copy of an entry in a register and that is by a providing certified copy of the entry in the register.

And yet an Archive or Records Office can supply an uncertified copy of an entry from a Parish Register: which in the case of a marriage is the same as the entry in the registrar's register.  It does seem a strange anomaly!

From my interpretation of the legislation the GRO is obliged to provide a certified copy on request but at present I can see nothing which says that it cannot also provide an uncertified copy for use for certain purposes (eg family historians). For example, why can't the GRO simply photocopy a relevant part of the page (without all the expensive formatting for a certified copy), mark the copy as uncertified and not for legal use and send it out? There may, of course, be other issues for living persons so that a date limit would be necessary.

Nigel

[MUMMYG]

Well done Nigel, Ive been trying to find a way of saying this exact thing. I totally agree with you and am fed up with people rolling out the same old party line about the public subsidising our hobby, it doesnt add up. We are being taken for fools here I feel.

I was NOT 'rolling out the same old party line'. I have a mind of my own and was expressing my own opinion.

Jennifer

  Wasnt picking on you particularly, I keep on hearing this same line, look back and see how many times on here even.
I could just as easily keep repeating that I have worked for civil service (my husband still does) and I know for a fact that they waste taxpayers money by the ton, the government can hardly talk, that is not the reason they are doing this and we all know it and thats what is so infuriating.

Im sure thats not just 'my opinion'

[MUMMYG]

Not only is it legal to issue the information it is a legal requirement that they do if requested.

Maybe I was hasty, obviously it would be lawful wouldnt it, because they are the ones who make the rules, I should have said morally illegal.  They force us to give the information on threat of punishment and they are legally obliged to provide it if we ask. they have the staff, offices and resources in place anyway to process all this information,its not like they had to set up just to supply us family historians. They should not be allowed to make any kind of profit from it, paying £10 for what amounts to a few surnames is not my idea of value for money and is now pricing me out of this pastime of  family storyteller sadly. And they wonder why people turn to ripping and hacking, tsk!

Ive just been stung for £14 for full copies of my childrens birth certs for first passports,(new rules to suit them) after already shelling out for a few copies at birth for such reasons,which are now useless.

It has been proved time and time again that the petitions do not have the desired effect.
To be effective the petitions have to be well thought out, correctly worded and have well over 25,000 signatures

Apathy will get us nowhere, if nobody made their voice heard, then they would think they could get away with anything, maybe it will make them think twice about raising the price next year.

[Guy Etchells]

Maybe I was hasty, obviously it would be lawful wouldnt it, because they are the ones who make the rules, I should have said morally illegal.  They force us to give the information on threat of punishment and they are legally obliged to provide it if we ask.

Again you are working on a wrong assumption.
The GRO do not make the rules and never have.
They are governed by laws made by Members of Parliament, the same as the rest of us.
The law required them to keep the records (a task now overseen by the Identity and Passport Service).

they have the staff, offices and resources in place anyway to process all this information,its not like they had to set up just to supply us family historians. They should not be allowed to make any kind of profit from it, paying £10 for what amounts to a few surnames is not my idea of value for money and is now pricing me out of this pastime of  family storyteller sadly. And they wonder why people turn to ripping and hacking, tsk!

Ive just been stung for £14 for full copies of my childrens birth certs for first passports,(new rules to suit them) after already shelling out for a few copies at birth for such reasons,which are now useless.

The price of certificates etc. is not set by the GRO either but is set by what is called a Statutory Instrument. Civil servants and number crunchers often simply use the inflation figures (as seems to have happened this time) to set the new charges.
Occasionally they check the real costs involved to provide the service , which if they did today would increase the charge to between £15 and £20 per certificate.
It should also be noted they do not make any profit but actually run at a loss (check the published accounts).

Apathy will get us nowhere, if nobody made their voice heard, then they would think they could get away with anything, maybe it will make them think twice about raising the price next year.

I can assure you I am not apathetic, in fact quite the opposite.
I am however opposed to badly researched, misguided attempts and petitions that are counter productive.
The accounts for the year 2005-2006 show that 1,640,479 certificates were issued.
Now let use assume that every person ordered four certificates that would amount to 410,119 people ordering certificates.
The current petition had when it closed 1,222 signatures.
Using these out of date figures ( present figures will be higher).
The figures therefore could be seen to show that only 1,222 customers out of 410,119 were dissatisfied with the costs.

Far from causing them to think the costs are too high the petition could actually make them think the public would accept a far higher increase before even 10% complain about the increase.
Cheers
Guy

[coombs]

So the GRO didn't decide the new price increase then if they dont make the decisions?