GRO Indexes

[Per Quist]

Further to what was correctly said above in two posts about the ancestry dot com record set...
England and Wales, Death Index, 2007-2013

which, in any case, is a misleading record set title, as is typical with many of the record set titles on ancestry.

This is the verbatim wording of ancestry's information about that record set

"Original data: GreyPower Deceased Data. compiled by Wilmington Millennium, West Yorkshire."

"About England and Wales, Death Index, 2007-2013
This collection is a compiled index that covers approximately 55% of the total deaths that occured in this time period.
This index provides death details for people in England and Wales, specifically their name, gender, date of birth or age at death, date of death, and residence place at death. However, they do not include the General Register Office (GRO) reference information."

With the GRO birth, marriage, and death registration index records that are available online up to recent years as computerised records, the explanation for the reason for the cut off date of the availability of computerised versions of those records, which I've read about, says that the GRO project for the transcription and computerisation of those records was halted before it was completed, because the funding for the project was withdrawn.

That only makes sense up to a point though, because obviously the current records for the more recent and non publicly available online registrations are already on a GRO computerised database, so extracting the registration information from the GRO database shouldn't be a technically impossible or or hugely expensive task, if the will to do it was present.

[Mean_genie]

Dawnsh gave the correct reason for the cessation of the online indexes in her earlier post. When the GRO moved from being part of the Office for National Statistics to the Passport Office, they took the view that they were not empowered to sell copies of their indexes. Prior to that, the commercial sites bought a new set of indexes every year.

[dawnsh]

Lud Quist

You are talking about 2 different programmes.

The GRO started to digitise the registers under the DOVE and MAGPIE projects. It is these projects which have been halted after failure and hugh costs involved.

Some births and deaths have been digitised but no marriages have. This accounts for the early sending of birth and death certificates well within the 5 working day SLA for some applications.

The programme to put the GRO indexes online after 2007 is another matter.

The GRO took legal advice circa 2008 and they do not have to make their data and fiche available to anyone else as they used to: to libraries, record offices and commecial companies such as FindMyPast & Ancestry, as long as sufficient hosts sites are located around the country to make these records available.

I used to be in the GRO Busines User Group, and many discussions on the costs and viabilty of putting the data online were had.

The GRO's financial remit is not to make a profit, and with Government cut-backs affecting every department, there are no funds to make this happen even if they wanted to change their mind.

As I mentioned earlier, some companies do avail themselves of the recent death data on a weekly basis in return for a hefty fee (it used to be £57k per annum), but they fall into the category of preventing identity theft and fraud and their numbers are strictly controlled.

Probate genealogists and companies 'cleaning lists' do not come under that remit.

It's not an ideal situation for those of us on the professional circuit who are using the fiche, but we have to put up with what's on offer. The low numbers of researchers at the 2 London sites I see on a daily & weekly basis, explains why they are not investing in putting the information after 2007 online.

[LizzieL]

The Great British Public had enough trouble putting big, clearly-labelled book back in the right order at St Catherine's House and the FRC

I remember that well  And how they whacked them down on the tables and frantically scrabbled through the pages as if the print might fade before they'd located their ancestor.

[Cell]

I mean Bridgend and Plymouth in particular. ! Hardly central hubs, are they. ?

Bridgend is  a very central hub for many from around the two largest cities of Wales, including the Capital of Wales.

If  Cardiff , or Swansea the second largest city of Wales had them = distance  to travel for Cardiff people to Swansea (and vice versa)   is around 41 miles

Swansea to Bridgend is only about 23 miles
Cardiff to Bridgend is about 20

It is in a very central position for people from around both these major, populated cities of Wales. It is far more convenient than traipsing  a few hours drive away to some capital or city in foreign lands

Kind Regards

[CarolA3]

Someone.famous (who?) said you can't please all of the people all of the time.  In this case, some people would moan if they had to cross the road to view these records

Per Quist, the situation is hardly likely to change so there's little point in carrying on about it.  A more productive approach would be to post polite requests on RootsChat if you can't visit these places yourself.  There are many requests every day for all sorts of look-ups.  It's what I would do if I was researching a recent event.

Carol

[carol8353]

Someone.famous (who?) said you can't please all of the people all of the time.  In this case, some people would moan if they had to cross the road to view these records

John Lydgate  apparently Carol 

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

[CarolA3]

Thanks Carol, I'll spend a productive few minutes looking him up

Carol