OneGuyFromBarlick

Taken from LFHHS

Dear All,

There is a petition on line to make historic BMD registers available. The organiser Guy Etchells is asking us to seek support from our membership.

Have a look at the petition and see what you think.

It needs a lot more signatures if it is going to succeed - only 5729 have signed up as at today. It needs at least 100,000 before 25/03/15 to cause any Parliamentary action.
Would you like to help ?
Steve Benson

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/62779


Petition to open historic registers

Responsible department: Home Office

We ask that historic birth marriage & death registers be open to public inspection at county record offices or the National Archives

Until 1973 registers of BMD held at superintendent registrar’s offices were open to public inspection
Today’s technology available allows the registers to be digitized and made available as facsimile copies protecting the original from damage

Commercial concerns are willing to scan the registers and make them available online under licence at no cost to the public purse

A new accurate index of BMDs could be compiled by volunteers thereby complying with the 1836 legislation for the first time in 177 years.

The benefits include taking pressure off Superintendent Registrars and the GRO enabling them to concentrate on the core task of recording & administering current registrations.

Revenue would be created for the County Record Offices or the National Archives swelling the government coffers. All at no cost to the taxpayer or government.

Number of signatures:
5,729

Created by: Guy Etchells

Signed Gloria seems like an excellent idea to me. I'll get Sally to have a look as well.

Signed.

Done Gloria. I'll confirm as soon as I get the reply mail. Thanks for raising the matter.
Ten minutes later, email confirmed.... vote registered.

Signed. Nolic

Thankyou All, every signing counts.

Signed. Cathy. Good Luck

There was a petition on a related topic last year where it was requested that BMD certificates be made available just as a facsimile, and not a full legal document. It was said that this was the method in Ireland where such a copy of certificate was available for (I think) 5 euro. In view of the current massive interest in genealogy - I thought it would easily be successful, but it failed to get anywhere near the 100,000 point and lapsed.

Signed and confirmed, thanks Gloria.