General Chat

from 7 pounds to 9 pounds is a 28% increase, hardly think that is justifiable. Then again we pay a lot more for Certificates in Australia so really should not wine.

With todays exchange rates we will be paying in OZ what the cost was 12 months ago,

Gail

To all those outside of the UK who have an interest in this price increase.

You may only sign the petition if you are a British Citizen or an expat etc. Us colonialists are not eligible to sign.

Have signed the petition. Even a smaller increase would be better than 32%.

Lainey

A Number 10 petition has been started

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/grocertificates/

Mark.

n for reference

The bulk of the cost in in the human effort necessary to make it happen. It matters little whether the information is printed or sent to a pdf, copied onto a certificate or indeed to any other form of output.

Cost will only come down once the GRO digitisation project is completed. Unfortunately this was only partly completed when the budget ran out and has been put on hold, pending the allocation of more funds - not likely in the foreseeable.

Gordy Brown decreed a while ago that services such as this must be self sufficient, with no charge to the taxpayer (the passport service is another one which has seen huge rises in the past few years, because of this policy and the rises there are far far greater) So by all means have a moan, but don't expect anything to happen.

n

No, we do not have that option in England/Wales.

I have a birth and death cert from Scotlandspeople; very interesting and informative. The cost me nothing as I was offered some free credits.

We will all soon be paying the increase I'm afraid. Even if we did send them a petition it would end up in a shredder!

> "Is there a reason why a copy certificate is really needed?"

I would be happy with a digitally scanned version emailed or downloaded from their site (like the National Archives do with Wills) in JPG, TIF, or PDF format.

I am only after the facts, I'm not going to frame them and put them on the wall :-)

They are halfway there anyway as the ones we receive these days are scanned from the original. The oblong bit in the middle is the original image which is then printed onto nice paper. There is no reason this output couldn't be just sent to a PDF file instead.

Mark.

Is there a reason why a copy certificate is really needed?

In Scotland we have a great site, ScotlandsPeople. I have a large number of photocopies of rellies BDM's. They are good enough for me, as I am only looking for confirmation of events, after I have did a bit of searching.

I am assuming, perhaps wrongly, that the same option is available in England/ Wales?

Gail x

lets face it the gro are on to a good thing, the interest in family history is massive and they are getting a good turnover for really old certs, but they know people are going to pay up if they need that info

even if we manage to keep it at £7 for a couple of year's,it would be great.

well agree TREEHUNTER...
and MARK...you could start it i am sure there are plenty of us willing to sign,
dont forget all we are paying for is a peice of paper which is ours anyhow..

A lot cheaper in the Republic of Ireland for copies of certs.

Gina

let's face it, it's hardly an outrage ... Haiti is an outrage, Chile is an outrage, the collapse of the economy is an outrage, a 5 year old being kidnapped in Pakistan whilst on holiday with his father is an outrage ... I could go on, but I wont!

I don't think they really care what we think.
We are still going to order and pay.
BUT.... I would sign a petition.
Deanna X

Under £10 for a cert is still cheap. There isn't much else that hasn't gone up since 2003 when the charges were last reviewed.

The details of the 32% price increase are here
http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1569.htm

Anyone fancy starting a Number 10 petition? http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/

Mark.

On the Chat thread I pointed out that it must be at least an hour's work to process our requests and get the certificates back to us, especially if they haven't been given the exact reference, and the office overheads as well - and think of the minimum wage. And I was glad to find that others seemed to agree with me that we were getting value for money

Check out the prices we pay for Australian BDM certificates. Between $27 and $35 each. So that's about 14 to 18 of your pounds each give or take a few pennies.

The new price is cheap compared to our charges. Our transcripts cost more than your certificates.