11 May 2007
Hundreds of town halls have been left struggling with paperwork after the new online registration system for births and deaths was withdrawn following technical failures.
The Registration Online system, known as Ron, was first used to register civil partnerships when they were introduced in December 2005 and subsequently rolled out to cover births and deaths in
mid-March this year. Despite extensive piloting and testing, the system encountered problems including slow running and an inability to save data.
As a result, half of the town halls in England and Wales have taken it offline and reverted to previous local electronic systems and, in some cases, entering details by hand.
Geoffrey Theobald, chair of the Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services, said councils would endeavour to ensure that all members of the public continued to receive a good service, whichever system was being used.
'Our concern is that while local authorities have been working hard with the General Register Office to change services for the better, they are still awaiting a response from the Office for National Statistics on what the problem is and when it will be rectified,' he said.
'Another serious concern has been the additional burden put on councils to back-capture the additional manual information. Not only does it mean more time and resources, but there had been no indication from the GRO that additional financial costs will be reimbursed.'
The ONS has denied claims that Ron's problems represent total system failure. Peter Murphy, head of registration at the GRO, said only a small number of people would have experienced delays when reporting births and deaths.
He added that, given the system was operating satisfactorily in a number of areas, he was confident it would soon be working well everywhere. 'However, even greater care will be needed to ensure that it is not reintroduced in any areas if it will not immediately perform at acceptable levels,' Murphy said.
'We are not therefore currently estimating the date by which full rollout will be complete, other than to acknowledge that it could be some months.'
A spokesman for the ONS, which administers the GRO, told Public Finance he could not comment on whether councils would receive any extra financial help.
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