Modernising civil registration

In 2001, the Government announced its intention to modernise the way in which we register births and deaths, and give notice to marry.

These proposals were outlined in a White paper, 'Civil Registration: Vital Change' in 2002 and a subsequent consultation document in July 2003.

The Government decided to use the order-making powers of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 to change the law, but in December 2004 the Regulatory Reform Committee concluded that it was inappropriate to use this route.

In November 2005 the consultation document 'Registration Modernisation' was published reinforcing the Government's commitment to modernisation of the local registration service. This paper also set out how other changes proposed in the 2002 White Paper were to be progressed.

In 2006 the Government pushed ahead with the new governance arrangements outlined in the 2005 consultation document, and these are now widely in place across the local registration service. These arrangements have been enhanced by the coming into force of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, under which registration officers have become local authority employees.

In March 2006 the General Register Office introduced a web-based system which enabled officers to record civil partnership registrations online. This system - Registration OnLine (RON) - has been extended to cover birth, death and stillbirth registration. Whilst local registers still record the event, the use of RON assists with this and also increases the efficiency of collating the national record for England and Wales.In November 2009 the web-based system has been extended to include marriage preliminaries taken by the civil registration service. The final module of the RON system will record marriage registrations: this will be introduced approximately a year after the marriage preliminaries module, to maximise efficiencies in the transfer from the former procedures.

The General Register Office is also currently reviewing its options for digitising all birth, death and marriage records dating back to 1837. For more detailed information on this project see our information on the Digitisation project.