Genealogy Chat

Has anyone else suffered from ‘centralisation’ and ‘progress’ designed to streamline the purchase of certificates? I have ordered a number of BMD Certificates from Accrington Registry Office. When I first began ordering the certificates I could just phone the Registry Office, give the details of the certificate I required and a very kind lady would phone me back within 24 hours to say they had located the certificate, she would take my bank details, debit my account and within another 24 hours the certificate would be on my doormat. Then everyone began tracing his or her family history. I now had to write in to request the certificate but it still was still delivered within a week. Full marks to Accrington Registry Office for efficiency. Now all records for Lancashire have been centralised at Preston. Officials are very busy with requests for certificates for people requiring passports. They are processing very few certificate requests for family history purposes. I applied over a month ago and when I telephoned the Lancashire Record Office I was told that they couldn’t give me a time when I could expect to receive my certificate but they hope to clear the backlog of requests for passport services by ‘sometime’ in September. This will mean a wait of over 2 months. Thank goodness I am not a professional genealogist hoping to be paid for my work

I use the gro site on the net........centralised at Southport..........£7..........4 days wait........simple.

thats the one i use too. I access it through 1837 all my payment details etc stay in the system. My last cert arrived before it was due to be posted out to me (if that makes sense) brenda x

I use GRO too, no problems at all, all arriving within 4-6 days Sam

Daisy Rose You have my fullest sympathy! Nearly all my certs come from Lancs area. Like you, I used to phone up, have a good old chat with whoever and we would decide that that cert was wrong, so no point sending it. Or we would decide it was right, they would sent it that night and trust me to send a cheque!!! Or, the nice lady would have good hunt around and phone me saying, do you think this could be him? Wonderful stuff and I used to wonder why anyone bothered with the GRO at all.(Lancs is notorious for not having sent all its returns to the GRO in the 1860s and I found several missing rellies through the local Register Offices) I have also on various occasions requested stuff from Lancs Records Office at Preston - delays, mistakes, can't find your letter etc etc, pretty inefficient over all. I console myself with the thought that all this 'Centralisation' and efficiency is a sign that the Register Offices are gearing up to release the info to us on-line, as we were promised would happen by 2006. Olde Crone.