Every published office record starts with council information. We use council pages to find offices and their practical arrangements, and cross-check discovery against the GOV.UK register office finder. This process produces candidates; appearing in a discovery source does not automatically qualify an office for publication.
What makes a record publishable
A record needs a checked address and either opening hours or an appointment rule. It also needs another useful office-specific detail, such as services, a booking link, a telephone number, fees, ceremony rooms or accessibility information. Source checks must be recent enough to pass our freshness rule. A place name and address alone are not enough.
Extraction and verification
An automated extraction pass identifies facts in the source text. A separate verification pass checks the proposed details against the page. Hours and fees must agree before they are accepted. Supporting evidence is retained in our data for audit, but source quotations are not displayed on office pages. Instead, each published fact links to its source and shows the check date.
Automation can make mistakes. A quoted passage can be real while referring to a different service or location, which is why checking scope matters as well as matching text. We do not treat a building’s opening hours as proof that every registration service is available then. We also distinguish a booking requirement from a general timetable.
Missing and conflicting information
A missing day is not marked closed. A missing fee is not treated as free. If sources disagree, the disputed field is withheld and the record directs you to the council. An office can remain published only if its other verified information still meets the publication rule. Records whose evidence becomes stale are withheld from the current directory.
Refreshing records
The pipeline is configured to revisit council sources weekly. A changed page needs renewed verification, while an unchanged source retains its supported facts with a fresh check date. A failed fetch does not count as successful verification. The dates shown beside individual details describe the actual checks, rather than the date a page template was rebuilt.
Your final check
The council remains the authority for appointments, eligibility, documents and charges. Read its current instructions before travelling or paying. Our directory cannot guarantee availability, provide personalised registration advice or change a booking. If you find an error, send the office name and council source link. Please leave out certificates, identity documents and other personal registration information.