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Colleagues may be interested to hear of recent developments in relation to the review. I am the ACALG representative on the LACORS Registration Services Policy Forum. On 29 March the Government announced a change in the proposed legislative programme. Instead of the original proposal for a single Regulatory Reform Order to cover all the changes, there will now be two. The Government intends to introduce the first Order before the summer recess 2004, with provisions relating to the registration of births and deaths and the organisational and structural changes necessary to transfer responsibility for face-to-face registration services to local authorities. The presentation of proposals relating to marriage will be postponed till early in the 2004/05 Session. This split is designed to ensure that the momentum for reform is sustained whilst providing an opportunity for the second Order to take account of Parliament's wishes on Civil Partnership legislation. GRO has drawn up, in association with LACORS, a document setting out the key milestones in implementation. The first significant date from an archival point of view is mid 2005 when the contract for digitising the "historic" records should be let; this may be difficult in practice since the second Regulatory Reform Order is not planned to be on the statute book before November 2005. The document envisages the data capture being completed by the last quarter of 2007. This milestone will also have the effect of releasing the historic records for local authorities to make their own arrangements for storage and access. The completion of the digitisation of records of the active completion is expected by the third quarter of 2007. That will have two significant effects for archivists: a) restrictions on access to various fields in marriage records will then be enforced, since the public will have digital access to the edited records; and b) local authorities may wish to make new arrangements for storing registers away from register offices. The timetable document encourages authorities to "involve" archive services when developing solutions to the issues of storage and access. It is to be hoped that there will be constructive dialogue between Registration and archive services well before then. As you will appreciate, the timetable put forward is still outline at best, as there is every likelihood of some slippage. There is also still very little in the way of practical details of implementation. I will try to keep colleagues informed of developments. If anyone has any issues which they wish to raise please contact me. Jonathan Pepler County Archivist and Data Protection Officer tel: 01244 603391 email: [log in to unmask] ********************************************************************** Note : This E-Mail is sent in confidence for the addressee only. Unauthorised recipients must preserve this confidentiality and should please advise the sender immediately by telephone and then delete the message without copying or storing it or disclosing its contents to any other person. We have taken all reasonable precautions to ensure that no viruses are transmitted from Cheshire County Council to any third party. Copyright in this e mail and attachments created by us unless stated to the contrary belongs to Cheshire County Council. Any liability (in negligence or otherwise) arising from any party acting, or refraining from acting on any information contained in this e mail is hereby excluded. Should you communicate with anyone at Cheshire County Council by e-mail, you consent to us monitoring and reading any such correspondence. Printing this email? Please think environmentally and only print when essential! **********************************************************************