Established in 1837, the GRO was created to centralise the registration of births, marriages, and deaths across England and Wales. Before this, records were often piecemeal and held by individual parishes, making comprehensive tracking a near impossibility. Its primary function remains the same: acting as the central repository for all birth, marriage, civil partnership, and death records for England and Wales.
This means that if you need an official copy of a birth certificate for a passport application, a marriage certificate for a divorce, or a death certificate for probate, the GRO is your main source for this. Documents obtained from the GRO will already contain an official signature on them. This is usually subscribed by a registrar or deputy registrar to the document, which in turn means the document can be apostilled by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) without the need for notarisation.
The Apostille process can be lengthy
However, we have an agreement for an express service with the FCDO, which greatly cuts down the time it takes to obtain an apostille.
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