Government Response to Petition for BMDs Electronic index

23 Nov 2007, Carole wrote:

A Petition has been started by John Fairlie at the 10 Downing Street website.

"....... to ask the Prime Minister
to Mandate the electronic indexing and free public searching thereof of locally held records of Birth, Marriage and Death at Register Offices across England and Wales."
May be signed by British Citizens only. Home address and email address has to be submitted when signing, but only names are displayed online.
Deadline to sign up by: 01 January 2008
For more information and to sign this Petition, go to the 10 Downing Street Website page http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/LocalBMDIndexing

The government's full response to the petition is now online at
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page14568.asp
and includes.........

Quote:

18 February 2008
We received a petition asking:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Mandate the electronic indexing and free public searching thereof of locally held records of Birth, Marriage and Death at Register Offices across England and Wales......"

"........The Government considers it a matter for individual local authorities to determine how they make publicly available index information relating to birth, death and marriage registrations. The Government does not propose to seek a change in the law to force local authorities to make index information available online or by other electronic means."

"The General Register Office (GRO)...........
is in the process of producing a digitised copy of all records dating back to 1837 (births, deaths, marriages) when registration became a statutory requirement. The GRO will create a digitised index to the registrations and hopes within the next two years to have the made its GRO index available online for free public access.

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Carole, Smith Project/Smith Chat Admin www.smithfamilies.org.uk
Nothing is too small to know, and nothing too big to attempt (William Van Horne)