OpenLegislation

Explanatory note

Original text. Later amendments are not shown.

The Acts relating to registration of births, deaths and marriages (The Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the Marriage Act 1949 and the Registration Service Act 1953 ) empower the Registrar General to prescribe various forms and procedures necessary for the operation of those Acts. Also, the last mentioned Act empowers the Registrar General to prescribe the duties of registration officers in the execution of any enactment, their qualifications for appointment and other matters affecting these officers. These Regulations consolidate with amendments the earlier regulations which prescribed these forms, procedures and duties, etc. They do not, therefore, themselves contain a complete code of registration, but are supplementary to the Acts referred to.

The regulations deal with the following main matters:—

  1. 1.

    Qualifications for office as registration officer, and other general matters affecting such officers ( Regulations 4 to 12)

  2. 2.

    Registration of birth (more detailed procedure being involved if the interval between birth and registration exceeds 3 months) and re-registration after legitimation (Regulations 16 to 36)

  3. 3.

    Birth entries of adopted children (Regulations 37 and 38

  4. 4.

    Registration of still-births (Regulations 39 to 47)

  5. 5.

    Registration of death (including prescription of the notices, etc., required to be issued by general practitioners) (Regulations 48 to 56)

  6. 6.

    Disposal of bodies of deceased persons (including prescription of the necessary certificates) ( Regulations 57 to 62)

  7. 7.

    Registration of marriage (including the preliminary notices etc., and the manner of registration) ( Regulations 63 to 70)

  8. 8.

    Correction of errors in any entry in a register (Regulations 71 to 77)

  9. 9.

    Short certificates of birth (Regulations 81 and 82)

  10. 10.

    Applications for birth or death certificates for purposes of certain other Acts (Regulations 84 and 85)

The principal changes from the earlier regulations are that numerous points of detail affecting only registration officers have been omitted and that new forms of entry are introduced for births, still-births and deaths (forms 1, 5 and 9 in schedule 1).

These are divided into spaces instead of columns as before, and now require particulars about the place of birth of parents and of a deceased person.