A registration district in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

is a type of administrative region which exists for the purpose of

civil registration Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events (Birth certificate, births, Marriage certificate, marriages, and Death certificate, deaths) of its citizens and Residency (domicile), residents. The resulting repos ...

birth Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring, also referred to in technical contexts as parturition. In mammals, the process is initiated by hormones which cause the muscular walls of the uterus to contract, expelling the f ...

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...

s, and

death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...

s and

civil partnerships A civil union (also known as a Civil partnership in the United Kingdom, civil partnership) is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, primarily created to provide legal recognition for Same-sex relationship, same-sex couples. Civi ...

. It has also been used as the basis for the collation of

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

information.

Origin and development of registration districts

England and Wales

Registration districts in

England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the Law of the United Kingdom#Legal jurisdictions, three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Th ...

were created with the introduction of civil registration on 1 July 1837 and were originally co-terminous with

poor law union A poor law union was a geographical territory, and early local government unit, in Great Britain and Ireland. Poor law unions existed in England and Wales from 1834 to 1930 for the administration of poor relief. Prior to the Poor Law Amendment ...

s. Their existence as autonomous entities came to an end in 1930, when the relevant

administrative county An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, and in Ireland from 1899 until 1973 in Northern Ireland, 2002 in the Republic of Ireland. They are now abolished, although most Northern ...

or county borough was made responsible. A subsequent series of reforms of

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

has resulted in the responsibility today being held by the relevant

county council A county council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a county. This term has slightly different meanings in different countries. Australia In the Australian state of New South Wales, county councils are special purpose ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a type of local government, local authority in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Unitary authorities are responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are ...

metropolitan district A metropolitan borough (or metropolitan district) is a type of local government district in England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972, metropolitan boroughs are defined in English law as metropolitan districts within metropol ...

, or

London borough The London boroughs are the current 32 districts of England, local authority districts that together with the City of London make up the administrative area of Greater London, England; each is governed by a London borough council. The present ...

. Each district is divided into sub-districts, each of which has a registrar responsible for the registration of births, marriages, civil partnerships, and deaths in his or her area. Overall responsibility for a district is held by a superintendent registrar. Registration districts are not always co-terminous with county boundaries, and so in the past were grouped into "

registration counties A registration county was, in Great Britain and Ireland, a statistical unit used for the registration of births, deaths and marriages and for the output of census information. In Scotland registration counties are used for land registration purpose ...

" for

statistical Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

purposes. They remained in use for the census from 1851 to 1911.

Scotland

Registration districts in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

came into being with the introduction of civil registration there in 1855; away from the cities their boundaries usually coincided with civil parishes. Prior to 1 January 2007, registration districts did not coincide with

council areas For local government purposes, Scotland is divided into 32 areas designated as "council areas" (), which are all governed by single-tier authorities designated as "councils". They have the option under the Local Government (Gaelic Names) (Sc ...

in many areas; commonly both geographically large and densely populated Council Areas had several registration districts, each with a registrar within easy reach of most residents. The Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Act 2006 aligned the boundaries of registration districts (or groups thereof) with those of the 32 Scottish council areas. The Act also allows births and deaths to be registered with any registrar in Scotland, rather than solely in the registration district where the event occurred or in the registration district of usual residence.

Ireland

There are approximately 164 Superintendent Registrar's Districts (SRDs) in Ireland and Northern Ireland; some were dissolved, split, or merged in the mid to late 1800s, and a few (such as Fingal) were created in the 1900s. Many of the SRDs share the name of the Irish county in which most of their land exists: Specifically, the SRDs of Londonderry, Donegal, Antrim, Sligo, Monaghan, Armagh, Cavan, Longford, Roscommon, Galway, Kilkenny, Carlow, Limerick, Tipperary, Wexford, Waterford, and Cork. However, the SRDs follow the general outlines of

Poor Law Unions A poor law union was a geographical territory, and early local government unit, in Great Britain and Ireland. Poor law unions existed in England and Wales from 1834 to 1930 for the administration of poor relief. Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Ac ...

that preceded them (see accompanying map), and often overlap across two or more

counties A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

. SRDs are also distinct from civil and

ecclesiastical {{Short pages monitor