General Register Office

Civil registries in Commonwealth related nations

General Register Office or General Registry Office (GRO) is the name given to the civil registry in the United Kingdom, many other Commonwealth nations and Ireland. The GRO is the government agency responsible for the recording of vital records such as births, deaths, and marriages (or BDM), which may also include adoptions, stillbirths, civil unions, etc., and historically, sometimes included records relating to deeds and other property transactions. The director of a General Register Office is often titled Registrar General or Registrar General.

The Registrar General of Canada title belongs to a government minister with entirely different and unrelated functions – such as registration of all letters patent, commissions, instruments, proclamations, and certain other documents. Each province and territory in Canada has a Registrar General responsible for collecting and storing records of births, marriages and deaths in their respective regions.

The General Register Office (Oifig An Ard Chláraitheora) is the central civil repository for records relating to births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships and adoptions in Republic of Ireland. It is part of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. The Registrar General is responsible for the management of the system of registration in Ireland, while the Health Service Executive (HSE) is responsible for the day to day delivery of the Civil Registration Service. Record keeping started in 1864, and many records are available online.

The Registrar General's Department of Sri Lanka is responsible for registration of birth, marriages and deaths as well as and legal documents pertaining to properties (land and title registration). The post was created in 1864.

The post of Registrar General was created by the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1836, and registration began in 1837. The Registrar General was soon given other responsibilities, such as the conduct of every census in England and Wales since 1841, and eventually came to be head of a primarily statistical organisation. In England and Wales, birth registration with the state began on 1 July 1837; however, only became compulsory in 1875. In 1970, with the creation of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys by merging the GRO and the Government Social Survey Department, the GRO became just one division of the new office, headed by a Deputy Registrar General. With the creation of the Office for National Statistics in 1996, the post of Registrar General was merged with that of Head of the Government Statistical Service, who became the National Statistician. Following the 2008 implementation of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, the General Register Office became a part of the Identity & Passport Service (as of lc=yes HM Passport Office – which in 2014 lost its executive agency status and became a division within the Home Office). Since 2020 the post has been held by Myrtle Lloyd, who is also Chief Operating Officer of HM Passport Office, and sits on the executive management board of the Home Office.

The GROS was a non ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administered the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adoptions in Scotland from 1854 to 2011. It was also responsible for the statutes relating to the formalities of marriage and conduct of civil marriage in Scotland. It administered the census of Scotland's population every ten years. It also kept the Scottish National Health Service Central Register. On 1 April 2011 it was merged with the National Archives of Scotland to form National Records of Scotland. All the former department's functions continue as part of the new body.

The General Register Office (Northern Ireland), or GRONI, is responsible for the civil registration of births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships and adoptions, as well as administering marriage and civil partnership law in Northern Ireland.