EXPLANATORY NOTE
These regulations consolidate with mostly minor amendments the provisions of the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages Regulations 1968, and of subsequent amending regulations, relating to the registration of marriages, and also the Marriage (Registrar General's Licence) Regulations 1970. They prescribe the forms to be used for the preliminaries to marriage (regulations 3 to 9), the form of registration of particulars (regulation 10), and the manner of registration by registrars (regulations 11 to 13).
In addition, they make provision for the correction of marriage entries (regulations 14 to 17); for the form of certification of quarterly returns (regulation 18); for applications for marriage certificates for certain purposes (regulation 19); and for offences, in particular for offences under specified enactments to be reported to the Registrar General (regulation 20). Provision is also made for consequential amendments (regulation 21) and for revocation of the provisions replaced with transitional provision for continued use of existing forms until the end of 1987 (regulation 22).
The principal change of substance is the prescribing, consequential on the coming into force of the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Act 1986, of a form of declaration of certain affinal relationships (regulation 6). Other changes of substance are the replacement of the four prescribed forms of notice of marriage without licence, and similarly the two forms of certificate for marriage, by a single form and the introduction of a separate form for the statement of the person by or before whom certain marriages are to be solemnized. Changes of substance are also made to regulation 11 (manner of registration). This no longer prescribes the manner in which the registrar is to complete the entry relating to age and it now prescribes the manner in which the marital condition of the parties to a marriage is to be entered where the parties have previously been through a form of marriage with each other and that marriage was annulled, neither party having since married a third person. In addition regulation 19 (application for certificate for certain purposes) does not include a reference to the purposes of section 160(2) of the Social Security Act 1975 (c. 14), the duties of registrars in this respect being governed by section 160(2) and (3) of that Act.