Andrew Chapman (@geneally) has been in touch to say that he has contacted the English and Welsh GRO at Southport to ask what developments may be happening in terms of digitisation of records, in lieu of the announcements made on this blog recently concerning the forthcoming intention to place historic Northern Irish birth, marriage and death records online next year (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/gro-northern-ireland-to-set-up.html and http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/more-on-new-groni-records-website.html).
The following is the line that Andrew received from the GRO about similar prospects for England and Wales:
An Identity and Passport Service spokesperson said: "Digitisation and indexing of civil registration records in England and Wales was partially completed by 2010. Completing the process would require significant investment and there are no current plans to resume this work. IPS will continue to monitor the scope for future opportunities to digitise all Birth, Death and Marriage records."
So, err, nothing to look forward to.
Keep an eye out for next month's Family Tree magazine (http://family-tree.co.uk), where I explore exactly what is happening across the UK just now with regards to access to civil registration records. Suffice to say, England and Wales are definitely coming off worse, and not just with online access - it's the new north/south divide.
(Cheers Andrew)
Chris
Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
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