Buy a copy certificate

Personal information which you are required by law to provide for a registration will be kept by the relevant local registration officer.

The local registration officer to whom you supply information will also send a copy of this information to the General Register Office (GRO) for England and Wales so that a central record of all registrations can be maintained.

A copy of any register entry will be provided to any applicant, provided that they supply enough information to identify the entry concerned and pay the appropriate fee.

The copy may only be issued in the form of a paper certified copy (a "certificate").

An application for a certificate may be made to either the Local Register Office or to the GRO. The GRO makes indexes, for the central record of registrations, publicly available in order to help members of the public identify the registration they might need.

The Register Office also makes a local index available for this purpose.

The Local Register Office may also choose to make the information contained within local indexes available on line. This will be done in order to help members of the public identify the registration they might need.

Any information placed on line must be done in manner which is compliant with the Data Protection and Human Rights Act. Additionally, confidential information for statistical purposes which you are required by law to give to the local registration officer, and other information provided voluntarily, will be passed to the UK Statistics Authority for the preparation and supply of statistics.

As well as providing certificates, local registration officers and the GRO may make registration information available to other organisations, for the following purposes:

1. Statistical or research purposes
2. Administrative purposes by official bodies e.g. ensuring their records are up-to-date
3. Fraud prevention or detection, immigration and passport purposes

For further information on data held by the Registrar General, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ips-privacy-policy

Staff at this local registration office will be able to provide further information on data held by the registration service.