General Register Office For England and Wales

The General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) is the section of the United Kingdom Identity and Passport Service responsible for the civil registration of births (including stillbirths), adoptions, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths in England and Wales and for those same events outside the UK if they involve a UK citizen and qualify to be registered in various miscellaneous registers. With a small number of historic exceptions involving military personnel it does not deal with records of such events occurring within the land or territorial waters of Scotland, Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland; those entities' registration systems have always been separate from England and Wales.

The GRO was founded in 1836 by the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836, and civil registration commenced in 1837. Its head is the Registrar General. Probably the most distinguished person associated with the GRO in the nineteenth century, although he was never its head, was William Farr. The current holder of the post (as of November 2010) is Sarah Rapson.

In 1972 the GRO became part of the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), with the Registrar General in overall charge. Until then it had had several statistical functions, including the conduct of population censuses and the production of annual population estimates. All these were moved elsewhere within the new organisation. The GRO then became just one division within OPCS, headed by a Deputy Registrar General. Then in 1996 the OPCS, and therefore the GRO, became part of the newly created Office for National Statistics, and the office of Registrar General was merged with that of Head of the Government Statistical Service.

The GRO supplies copies of birth, marriage, civil partnership certificates and death certificates, either online, via www.direct.gov.uk/gro or from one of the local register offices that act on behalf of the GRO.