Replacement birth certificate

tony0040

mine's a good one. following divorce, both passport and birth cert lost AND was born in GERMANY. In internal exile! any ideas anyone?

ecarliol

While one system operates for England and Wales, the law in Scotland is different.

Statutory fees are set in both systems and you can pay a little extra for card payments , postage or express services.

So very little cost savings to be made I'm afraid. However great time savings can be achieved if you buy your certificate from the Register Office in which the event (birth) was registered, rather than from the General Register Office (GRO).

A standard certificate is currently £7.00 plus postage etc., and generally available within a few days from local Register Offices, often the same day. Those that do an express service will possibly charge a little extra, but this is nought compared to the priority service from GRO costing in excess of £20.

Standard certificates contain full details from the register entry including parents' names and is necessary for most legal purposes these days (Passport, driving licence, work, university etc.)

If the appropriate Register Office is miles away you can apply by post, and often by phone if you are paying with a card.

Sometimes it is necessary to apply to GRO, for instance adopted persons or persons born overseas, including British military hospitals in Germany. In England and Wales this means applying to GRO in Southport. Your local Register Office will give you an application form and the address to send it to. Most Register Office staff are friendly, some extremely so - maybe they are hoping you'll like them so much go back there for your marriage!

Your local Register Office is a local authority service so you will find their details on the local county or borough council web site.

In Scotland it is possible to search indexes on line at www.Scotlandspeople.gov.uk and many local Register Offices in England and Wales also publish their local indexes on the web. Try www.nebmd.co.uk or www.cheshirebmd.org.uk , but there are many more. Genealogists love them.



So save a little money and a quite a bit of time at the Register Office.

clairewp

Lorne wrote: »

Thank you all so much for your replies. I've just gone onto the website and managed to order a replacement, £10 will be here in 14 days. My heart sank when I read the first post about having to go to the registrar office where he was born, 600 mile round trip (not very money saving with petrol as it is) so the online option was just excellent.

Now he just needs to find his passport.......men!

Hi did you get conformation e-mail, as i've ordered one as well but had no conformation.

thanks claire

pariskate

tony0040 wrote: »

mine's a good one. following divorce, both passport and birth cert lost AND was born in GERMANY. In internal exile! any ideas anyone?

Is is a UK passport you lost and if so where was it issued? If it's a UK passport they should have you on file some where and could perhaps sort something out. I imagine that you will have to go and have interviews and show other forms of identification.
Otherwise I think that Germany has a similar system to France in that you get copies of birth certificates from the town hall of the city where you were born.

tony0040

yup v similar attend interview in germany no probs come back without a passport? PROB!

pariskate

Sorry, perhaps I was not clear, I meant an interview at the UK passport office if you hold a UK passport.
You should be able to get a copy of your German Birth certificate without travelling to Germany, perhaps even via the German embassy or consulate in the UK. Did your parents also enter your birth in the British registrary at the consulate in Germany - if so you should be able to get a copy in the same way as any other UK born individual. My daughter was born here in France but I was able to register in the British register and she has a UK birth certificate as well as her French one.

I can't imagine that you are the only person ever to have had this problem so they must have a solution, even if it requires you to go and camp out at the UK passport agency for a while!

Lorne

clairewp wrote: »

Hi did you get conformation e-mail, as i've ordered one as well but had no conformation.

thanks claire

Hi Claire,

No I didn't get a confirmation email either, I did get an order code though on the webpage so he's going to give them a call next week if it hasn't turned up.

Hope it all works!

catswhiskers42

Just want to warn everyone not to use gov-certificates.co.uk
It's more expensive that the pukka website (https://www.gro.gov.uk). What is more I when ordered a marriage certificate, they failed to find it, but charged me £12 for the "search". Then they completely ignored my complaints.

zerodashzero

Thanks to everyone who has replied to this thread - it's such a relief to find how easy it is to get the full certificate. I went for a job interview recently that demanded all sorts of personal info & ID. Until that point thought I had a full birth certificate (turns out I have the short one).

Right, now to find a moneysaving way to get copies of my GCSE certificates (again, I thought I had the full things, turns out I just have the short version).

margaretclare

zerodashzero wrote: »

Right, now to find a moneysaving way to get copies of my GCSE certificates (again, I thought I had the full things, turns out I just have the short version).

The 'short version' is just the pass and grade on a small slip of paper, but it takes longer for the school/college/examining board to issue the full certificate. Mine took several months - 2007. Contact the school or college and ask - it shouldn't cost you anything!

HTH