The official records for Scotland are kept at New Register House, Princes Street, Edinburgh. Certificates of births, deaths and marriages since 1855 are available. London EC1 M7BA has an excellent library, containing copies of a vast number of parish registers in England and Wales, which visitors can inspect for a fee. Many of the small villages and towns have a Historical Society, which has indexed copies of the local Church registers and the census forms. The Registry Office at Exeter, Devon was providing a search service at the price of 15 pounds per hour, including VAT, with no guarantee of success.
Similar services are available in other areas.
The Mormon Church Family History organisation is attempting to load all old Church registers into its Family History database. Some Bishops were not allowing this copying but since centralistion, this problem has been overcome.