Genealogy Chat

Just thought you should be aware of forthcoming job losses at meseyside general records office, can't see why i bet they have never been so busy, these jobs will be'phased out by 2007' hope its not a knock in affect to us searching for rellies.

i would have thought it would have been the opposite of jobs being axed!! i would have thought they would have been creating more jobs because of all of us hunting for rellies lol

moe, hi, I didnt know they had that many staff working there? and the most there must be ONLY 20 people, they just cut the opening hours by two hour a day, evening mainly. You do mean the RO office in Picton Library dont you? I was there last Saturday. NOW THE registry office, thats a different thing. they are so inefficient there it wouldnt make any difference to us family historians, as they really arent interested in us, they are more interested in the modern marriages, births and deaths and passport documentation. i wouldnt use them if they were the last place on earth to get certs. TED

Is that the whole message, Moe? There may be plans afoot to change the way we access the information. If certificates were available online, then we wouldn't need anyone to photocopy the certificates and the delivery would be immediate. That is no consolation, though, to the poor people left without jobs.

the paper(liverpool echo) says that 300 out of a 1000 staff will be moved but not made redundant i assume it is the southport office' In access of 250m records will be transfared on to a computer database from microfiche currently stored in birkdale, near southport' ' the ONS say cutbacks are part of an efficiency drive at its General Register Office'

Maybe the jobs that are to be axed, are to co inside with certs being introduced on line, enabling us to download the certs for about £2 -£3 each. Not sure when this is going to be introduced. Jules

That would be cool, certificates online.

I can't wait for the certs to be online, no more waiting for the postman to arrive, plus as they will be cheaper i can order more Jules

Julie Do you have any idea how they are going to 'police' the availability of certs on line? Will it be restricted to say, certs over 50 years old? I can see a potential problem here! Or am I just being over-cautious? Marjorie

I hope they are of very very high quality. and how are they going to police it, no different i suppose to buying online normally. hopefully you'll be just be able to get them from one website, and stop others taking advantage of it

Marjorie & Steve Not sure how they will police it, i read about it a while ago in a family history mag. Although i don't think the system they have now is full proof, as you said maybe they will restrict it to a certain year. Jules

Steve Durh, yes, I hadn't thought of that - except, when you order on-line at present, you have to give an address for the cert to be sent to, which would give them in theory anyway, a paper trail, should you be up to no good. And yes, I wonder if my Printer is actually up to producing a copy of a copy of a smudgy old cert? Marjorie

Marjorie The GRO's original plans were horrendous and would have spelt the death knell for any new family historians. They intended to use a cut off of 100 years. No problems with obtaining details from these historic documents. But on modern documents, all sorts of information was to be denied you when researching anyone born less than a hundred years ago, eg address of the deceased on a death certificate. The Federation of Family History Societies was one of the bodies putting up a spirited challenge on behalf of family historians everywhere and the GRO were ultimately prevented from making radical changes. I believe that they are now planning to re-index the records, possibly including useful additional info re maiden/spouses names and age at death on the early entries.

The Isle of Wight FHS have indexes online right up to the year 2000. I can't see why the PRO's in other parts of the Country don't do likewise. I can lookup a marriage, download a form and send it off. I don't remember whether they have the facility to order online, but I ddon't like to do that anyway. Makes me wonder why there is no Cutoff date.

Brenda As it happens, I read today in a Family History book recently published, about these proposals. It appears that we will not be able to down-load actual certificates, but that the information contained on the certificates will be available on-line, as you say, next to the index.We will be able to print off this info, for a fee, but its not quite the same thing as having a certificate, is it? The 100-year rule will apply, with only restricted information available on-line. To get the full information, you will need to provide evidence that you are 'related' to this person.It does not say how you will do this! Personally, I think it is going to be a long time before this info is available - can you imagine the work of transcribing all this? Marjorie Forgot to say - it is intended to deposit all bmds over 100 years old in the local County Records Offices for safe-keeping.

Brenda I don't fancy this idea very much as my ink cost £25 a pop so long term it would cost me more. I even bought a DIY kit to inject the ink myself and lost the instructions so i wasted £15 and wrecked the cartridges, i suppose i should invest in a new printer with a cheaper ink cartridge.MOE!