Issue - meetings

The Mayor considered a report regarding the Out of Hours Register Offer.

The purpose of the report was to seek approval of the minor amendments to the Out of Hours Registrars offer to reflect the needs of the community and to continue to deliver best value.

The decision required Single Member Executive approval as it was a ‘minor variation to an existing policy or procedure’ as per Section 6.38.2(a) of the constitution.

The Out of Hours Registrars offer, as set out in the Registration & Bereavement Services Charter, currently offered an on-call service of two hours each Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 11am. The cover for this call-out was provided by a rota of Registrars.

The charter stated that the Registrar would be on call on a Saturday & Sunday morning between the hours of 9:00am and 11:00am (excluding bank holidays & festive holidays) to issue any paperwork for any urgent faith burials / cremations or an ‘Out of England Order’. Contact Tel 01642 726050 and asked to be connected to the Registrar on call service.

There are three main circumstances in which the on-call service would be required by members of the community, namely Certificate for burial or cremation before registration (commonly known as “Green Forms”), Out of England Order and Urgent marriages and civil partnerships.

The most common requirement for the on-call service in Middlesbrough is around the green forms. In September 2024 the process for death registrations was changed by the introduction of the Medical Examiner.

As a result of the ME system being introduced, the Registration Service had been monitoring the impact of this change, particularly in terms of lead times between dates of death and registration dates and looking at the calls into the weekend on call service.

Since the introduction of the ME System there had not been any calls to the on-call service on Sundays and only three on Saturdays. Data was not kept pre-September 2024 regarding the number of calls for the purpose of comparison, however the number of calls, particularly on Sundays had always been minimal.

OPTIONS

Remove the out of hours option for both Saturdays and Sundays – this change would have brought Middlesbrough out of line with other Local Authorities in the area and would not have best met the needs of the community in terms of being able to respond to any urgent requests.

ORDERED that the Mayor

1.    APPROVES the changes to the Out of Hours Registrars offer as set out in the Registration & Bereavement Services Charter, namely to remove the offer of an on call service on Sundays and to provide clarification around the introduction of the Medical Examiner process.

REASONS

The Out of Hours Registrars offer, as set out in the Registration & Bereavement Services Charter, currently offered an on-call service of two hours each Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 11am. The cover for this call-out was provided by a rota of Registrars.

Since the Medical Examiner changes in September 2024, which were set out in Section  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7