BMD INDEXES TO MOVE TO KEW

 

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has made two recent announcements.

 

Firstly, ONS intends to close its public search facility, currently located at the Family Records Centre (FRC) in Islington, and instead to make indexes available at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew. The relocation is expected to be complete by April 2008. The services currently provided by ONS in Islington will then cease. (When TNA announced earlier this year that it intended to relocate from the FRC 1st Floor to Kew, ONS said that it would be reviewing the services it offered at the FRC on the Ground Floor.)

 

The News Release can be read at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/frc0107.pdf but, as its wording is open to misinterpretation, the FFHS has contacted the Project Manager of the Digitisation of Vital Events (DoVE) team at Southport for clarification.

 

The heading of the Release states "Births, marriages and deaths records to go on the Internet" and in its main body it states "This will enable researchers to access records yet to be digitised in paper or microfiche format."

 

What we have been told will be available at Kew are the indexes to Births, Marriages and Deaths, not the records themselves (i.e. full registration details will still only be obtainable by purchasing copy certificates).

 

Furthermore, the DoVE Project will not have been completed at the time the relocation takes place. For those records that have been digitised and re-indexed, the newly produced indexes will be accessible on computer screens at Kew. Where digitisation will not have been completed, it is the existing indexes that will be made accessible: we understand that ONS have not yet established with TNA whether these will be the binders currently in use at the FRC or whether, because of space constraints, they will need to be provided in microfiche format.

 

The FFHS is scheduled to hold its periodic liaison meeting with the DoVE Team next week, and we will continue to keep you posted with the latest information on the DoVE Project as soon as it is available. ONS to close London HQ .

 

The second announcement is that it is also proposing to close its London headquarters at Drummond Gate, Pimlico, by 2010. Most of the 600 staff will move to Newport, South Wales, as part of a government programme to move jobs out of London, the ONS said. A small number of staff will go to Titchfield, in Hampshire, whilst the remainder numbering 100 or so will move to the FRC building.

 

Fuller details can be viewed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6267087.stm