Genealogy Chat

I have just noticed that from April the price of certificates from GRO is to rise. Any thoughts on a less costly way of obtaing the information from the certs as this is now becoming beyond the reach of a pension income?

Thanks Jonesey, some how thought that was going to be the answer!

generally free to look at parish records, however these are baptisms not births (sometimes many years later than the birth) and burials not deaths

however you would have to factor in the cost of travelling to the relevant records office, and, of course, your time, or the cost of purchasing CDs etc from the relevant family history socs

also Ancestry has many London records

to be fair to the GRO they are entitled to charge a fair price for their service as otherwise all those taxpayers completely uninterested in genealogy are in effect funding our hobby, we wouldn't expect other hobbies e.g. gardening, swimming to be free (i.e. we would buy plants etc) so why should genealogy be free

"to be fair to the GRO they are entitled to charge a fair price for their service as otherwise all those taxpayers completely uninterested in genealogy are in effect funding our hobby, we wouldn't expect other hobbies e.g. gardening, swimming to be free (i.e. we would buy plants etc) so why should genealogy be free"

That is of course only valid if you accept their word that 9.25 is a fair price. It costs them about 2.00 to produce and send a certificate, 450% mark up.

There have been several threads on this topic over the last couple of weeks


and it has been pointed out several times that this is the first increase since at least 2003



so yes, large when looked at in isolation


but not that large when one thinks that it has not increased for 7 years.



Think of it as that we have been very lucky that there have been no increases in the intervening years ...... or we'd probably be paying one heck of a lot more!



sylvia

I think £10 is a fair price these days. Having worked with costings in the past in the workplace, I can tell you that the true costs always works out far higher than most think it will, after taking everything into account.

£2.00 is probably the marginal cost of issuing one extra cert after all the fixed capital and other costs have been taken into account, but these still have to be paid for.

It is a bit like saying the cost of traveling by car is around 10p per mile, i.e.the cost of the petrol. It isn't - it is 4 times that amount, around 40p a mile, once all the other costs are added in.

GRO does also pay the postage, and you don't have to send them an envelope



Just think how many of us are like me, living overseas. They pay overseas airmail for us.


It's all the ancillary costs that you don't know about that add up


I would think that £2.00 is a very low estimate of the costs involved .... and I don't know how you would have any real idea of what is involved unless you work there?!


sylvia

At the GRO maybe that is all they do all day - send out certs, but at the local offices they do other things - the things they are actually there for -registering births deaths and marriages, so I don't think the cost is excessive.
It's a pity they didn't do a service whereby you could order by email and therefore print off your own copy. I know it doesn't look as nice but it is only the information that you need afterall. They could charge maybe £5.00 for that and they would make more profit that way.

Also, a key function of the GRO is to record new BMD's submitted by local register offices and maintain the registers. Issuing certs is probably secondary.

I believe that the digitisation project, currently on hold because the budget ran out, was going to provide an on-line service and reduce costs by reducing or eliminating the human element in the process. Hopefully the review that is now in process will come up with a solution to allow it to be completed.

The current process requires manual effort as the cert information is accessed from microfilm. These have to be retrieved from storage loaded into a reader and copied onto the printed cert. Your Family Tree Magazine had an article on the workings of the GRO cert department a while ago.

"I would think that £2.00 is a very low estimate of the costs involved "

The 2.00 cost for each certificate produced is the figure given by the government themselves in answer to a 'Freedom of Information Request" by the editor of the 'Lost Cousins' Newsletter. This is the same law that lead to the exposure of the appaling way M.P's were cheating us all.

The GRO is currently losing money hand over fist. If you can't find profit on a 350% mark up, there is major problem there which runs deeper than pricing. The problem must be one of innefficiency in the system (the botched attempts to create a digital system have already been mentioned). If anything rising the price is going to decrease the orders they receive hugely, and I expect they'll make even bigger losses. I believe eventually sense will be seen and the certs will be available to view online, so I'd hold off buying until then, and just hope it wont take forever.

"It's a pity they didn't do a service whereby you could order by email and therefore print off your own copy. I know it doesn't look as nice but it is only the information that you need afterall. They could charge maybe £5.00 for that and they would make more profit that way."

If and when that system ever does get in place 5.00 a transcript would not seem that fair to me. (I think that is about whats truly a fair maximum at moment for a certified copy). The system itself digitised would be almost identical to Scotlands People in running costs and overheads (who charge 1.25 for a digital cert copy). The actual costs of digitising English and Welsh certs onto a database in the first place admittably would be far higher because of the greater volume involved..but, as I understand it those costs were being funded by the taxpayer, so if that is the case adding any charges for that onto the certs themselves would in effect be charging us 'twice'. Even if they did want to recoup those costs, I doubt anything more than 2.00 a digitial cert would be truly justifiable.

As I said earlier, having been involved with costing processes for many years, I would suggest that £2.00 is the marginal cost to cover consumables only, and that capital, IT, equipment, premises etc etc are not recovered by this figure.

Do you think that £2 would cover staff wages, national insurance conts etc? Heating, electricty etc?

Again....this is not what I 'think'..which since I don't work there and know next to nothing about it is highly irrelevent.

This is what they themselves answered to a Freedom of Information request. Two pounds is the cost of producing and sending a certificate. How comprehensive the answer they gave would be a matter for further enquiry to them.

But for sake of arguement, I will venture my own personal opinion (nothing more of course) which is that I'd be highly suprised if that didn't actually factor in the majority of the periphery costs. Think about it how much is a piece of paper, a bit of ink, and a scanner? On that basis a cert costs maybe 5-10p max to produce? I'd imagine the bulk of other 1.90-1.95 odd, does refer to wages, N.I, electric, storage etc.

Besides from that, even if you accept the seven pounds to start with was anything like fair (I do not at all), this rise is above inflation for past 7 year period, which would put a cert somewhere between 8.00-8.50 on average. So we are being charged an extra 75p to a pound for something else.

I'm suprised how few people seem to be questioning this rise, and accepting it as inherintely just, because it must be as it comes from a government department. Surely the M.P's expenses saga has shown we should be a lot less trusting.....

Anyway I rest my case there.

"Besides from that, even if you accept the seven pounds to start with was anything like fair (I do not at all), this rise is above inflation for past 7 year period, which would put a cert somewhere between 8.00-8.50 on average."

From £7 on 2003 to £9.25 equates to around 4% compounded inflation !

just to elaborate as my source I was using the follows:

£7.00p in 2003 relates to the following in 2009:

£8.29 using the retail price index
£7.92 using the GDP deflator
£8.52 using the average earnings
£8.61 using the per capita GDP
£8.86 using the share of GDP

These were figures given by another genealogist elsewhere, using an online calculator, but someone who is very thorough and I personally trust.


So given that the rise should be £7.92-£8.86 max. The average of these five is £8.44 which seems the fairest. So £9.25 is in my view roughly 75p to a pound overpriced on every certificate from April.

Of course fairly irrelevent anyway as I do not believe the £7 is anywhere near fairly priced at to start.

Regards

So does anyone know where this excess money has been going in the meantime?

£5 in 1999, I believe. £9.25 soon from the GRO or £9 from the register office.



It would be interesting to go to an open day at the General Register Office, there were some two years ago, to find out exactly what happens there

http://ffhs-lists.org.uk/pipermail/ffhs-news_ffhs-lists.org.uk/2008-May/000017.html
The Certificate Services Branch will once again be holding Open Days, giving members of the public a chance to find out more about how birth, death and marriage certificates are produced and see inside the wonderful Victorian building which is the home of Civil Registration for England and Wales.
The Open Days will take place on Saturday 7th June 2008 and Saturday 14th June 2008.

Visitors to the Open Days will be given the opportunity to:
Take a tour of the General Register Office ( GRO ) site in Southport and see a demonstration of the certificate production processes.


It would be interesting to visit anyway.

http://www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news100112.php

Squirrel. It's gone. wasted. They are losing millions. They are putting up the price, and will, I predict, stand to lose even more. The taxpayer will pay ultimately. They are not adressing the core problem, which is why is a department that is charging such a high margin on their goods still failing to even break even? That is a very bad sign.

Gone? Wasted on what? Surely there will be accounts that show where the money has gone?