Birth de-registration

Dear Mr Kevin McGuchan,

Acknowledgement of Freedom of Information Request - Case Number: 12244877

Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which I received on 15/11/2010. Your request will be processed under the terms of the Act.

In line with the Freedom of Information Act we will respond to you within 20 working days of the date that we received your request. If there are any problems with this request that may delay in the dissemination of information, we will contact you immediately.

Yours sincerely

Information Governance Officer

Please direct queries to:
Information Governance Team
Tel: 024 7683 3305
Fax: 024 7683 3395
[Coventry City Council request email]

www.coventry.gov.uk

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Dear Mr McGuchan

Thank you for requesting information about birth registration, which the
Council received on 11^th November 2010. Your request has been considered
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You have requested the
following information:

1. Is it possible to deregister a child from the birth register?

"De-registration" is not a term that is recognised in registration law.
So, if your query is general, the answer is "no". If you have in mind a
particular case or set of circumstances that relates to Coventry City
Council you may wish to make a more specific request for information to
us. To advise and assist you further, if you are seeking general advice
regarding birth registration matters, as opposed to specific case-related
information from, or about Coventry City Council, you may need to seek
independent legal advice. A useful starting point in such cases would be
to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau: http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

2. Have there been any successful cases of anyone deregistering a
child.

See answer to Q1

3. If there have been successful cases what are the case reference
numbers.

See answer to Q1

4. Can Coventry City Council lawfully remove an un-registered
child from its parents

A local authority cannot remove a child from the care of parents (with
parental responsibility) without consent or an order of the court and for
these purposes the actual registration is not relevant. However, it is an
offence not to register a child.

Please note that most of the information that you request is owned by the
Coventry City Council and subject to copyright protection. Under the
Re-Use of Public Sector Information 2005 Regulations you are free to use
this information for your own use or for the purposes of news reporting.
However, any other type of re-use under the Regulations, for example;
publication of the information or circulation to the public, will require
permission of the copyright owner and may be subject to terms and
conditions. For documents where the copyright does not belong to Coventry
City Council you will need to apply separately to the copyright holder.

If you wish to apply to reuse the information you have requested or have
any other issues relating to this request please do not hesitate to
contact me.

I hope you feel that our response meets your request. However if you are
dissatisfied you have a right to make a complaint about the handling of
your request, and you also have a right to make an appeal about the
outcome of your request - in the first instance this should be to the
Council's Information Governance Team at:

Council House, Basement Room 5

Earl Street, Coventry

CV1 5RR

[1][Coventry City Council request email]

If you are still dissatisfied with the outcome of the complaint and/or
appeal under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, you have the right to
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The
Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Chris Faulkner (Mrs)

Policy and Resources Manager

Finance and Legal Services Directorate

Coventry City Council

1st Floor, Christchurch House

Greyfriars Lane

Coventry CV1 2QL

Tel: 024 76833000

Fax: 024 76833770

www.coventry.gov.uk

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I am now out of the office and will return on Tuesday 4th January 2010. I
will deal with your e-mail on my return. However, if your enquiry is
urgent, please telephone the Secretariat on my number 76 833000 for
assistance. If your query is about a Freedom of Information request please
contact Karen Abel on 76832867.

This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are
intended solely for the use of the addressee. If you have received this
e-mail in error, you are requested to contact the sender

All e-mails are monitored by Coventry City Council IT Security, using
M@ilMeter and Star Filtering Services.

The views contained in this e-mail are those of the author and not
necessarily those of Coventry City Council.

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Dear Mr McGuchan

Thank you for your further queries about birth registration, which the
Council has considered under the provisions of the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 ("The Act").

Your queries are:

Please clarify what you mean by "registration law"

The applicable law is the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953.

You state it is an offence not to register a birth would that be an
offence under common law?

Regarding penalties under the legislation for non-registration, these are
contained within the legislation and are not a Common Law matter.

To advise and assist you further with regard to this, a full copy of this
legislation is publicly-available to view via the Office of Public Sector
Information (OPSI) web site. As such it falls under the exemption(s) in
Section 21 of the Act, which relates to 'information reasonably accessible
to the applicant by other means'. The exemption from disclosure applies
as the legislation is published and publicly-available to view by
accessing the following website at:

[1]http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz...

The Council also publishes details on how to register births via its own
web site at:

[2]http://www.coventry.gov.uk/ccm/navigatio...

As before, the Council advises that unless you have a particular case or
set of circumstances in mind that relate to Coventry City Council, you
should seek independent advice regarding any further general birth
registration queries.

While the Council wants to be as open as possible in answering requests,
and to help people obtain the information they are looking for, the Act
provides a right of access to information held by public authorities and
it is not for the Council to confirm the validity of anecdotes or provide
opinions and legal advice about a subject.

Please note also that the Council is not required to create new
information specifically in order to answer requests made under the Act.

To help us to assist you further, the Council asks that if you have any
specific information requests clearly relating to Coventry City Council
and its activities, for example a specific case regarding
birth-registration involving the Council (as opposed to general queries or
requests for opinions) please focus your requirements accordingly.

Please note that in the event the Council receives any further queries on
this or related matters from you that do not specifically relate to the
activities of Coventry City Council, the Council will not respond and may
choose to exercise its right to refuse such requests as vexatious, in line
with the provisions of Section 14 (1) of the Act.

The Council has considered here whether the requests would impose a
significant burden, have the effect of harassing the Council, or could
otherwise be characterized as obsessive or manifestly unreasonable.

In reaching this decision, the Council has also taken into consideration
the nature of your previous request and correspondence on this.

I hope you feel that our response meets your request. However if you are
dissatisfied you have a right to make a complaint about the handling of
your request, and you also have a right to make an appeal about the
outcome of your request - in the first instance this should be to the
Council's Information Governance Team at:

Council House, Basement Room 5

Earl Street, Coventry

CV1 5RR

[3][Coventry City Council request email]

If you are still dissatisfied with the outcome of the complaint and/or
appeal under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, you have the right to
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The
Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Chris Faulkner (Mrs)

Policy and Resources Manager

Finance and Legal Services Directorate

Coventry City Council

1st Floor, Christchurch House

Greyfriars Lane

Coventry CV1 2QL

Tel: 024 76833000

Fax: 024 76833770

www.coventry.gov.uk

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