What We Do
We will visit New Register House on your behalf and do a manual transcription of each document that we view for you. We will then send you the transcription, either by post or by email (by scanning them first), or both. These transcriptions are not legal documents; for that you still must make your request directly to New Register House; however, there are many times that you will want the information but don't need the certification.
There is no guarantee that your records will be available at the facility. Some records for which there is no image are Old Parish Records. These take a little longer to find, and then can be difficult or impossible to read; not all of them, but if you're paying for the time it takes to look something up, it's best to know going in that you may not always get a result.
What You Get
There are several levels of service:
Basic Service
If you only have one or two records to view, this may be the best option for you. While the fee is based on the number of documents viewed, as opposed to the time it takes to view them, there is a greater turnaround time, as several clients are having their records viewed in one session. To make a visit to New Register House worthwhile, We need to have a list of a minimum of 10 records to view. You may have to wait while the list of one- or two-record viewings gets up to a total of 10, but you will pay a smaller overall fee. The fee for basic research is £5 per record. This service is most effective if you already know which records you want transcribed; e.g. you have found the records indexed, but there is no image available.Standard Service
A Standard search is a session or half-session at General Register House dedicated to your records only. You can use this level of service if you already know which records you want transcribed or if you want a general search done. If you know which records you want transcribed, you should send a list of all the records that you have tried to view and been met with "no image", together with the GROS data. These are very easy to look up and we can get through several records in an hour. It is quite likely* that you could get transcriptions for 5 to 10 Birth, Death, Marriage or Census records for a £25 one-hour fee. You will get hand-copied transcriptions of the records we view. While these are not certified copies, they are suitable additions to those records that you can download from the Scotland's People web site. You can then decide whether to order a certified copy of the record from New Register House, or just to use the transcribed information "as is". When you contact us with your list, we will respond with an estimate of how long it will take to look them up and transcribe them. Marriage and census records take longer to transcribe than birth and death records, so the balance of the number of type of each record on your list will determine the total time involved in transcription.Premium Service
The Premium service is a more standard search service, and is charged at the hourly rate. The very helpful people at New Register House will undertake a search like this for you, but they will, understandably, charge a search fee plus a document fee. (Look here to see their service and fees.) If you don't need or want the certified copy of the document, just the information from it, this can become a cumbersome burden. As with the above service, we will view the document and transcribe it for you. You will get the information, transcribed as it appears on the original document**, but not the certified document. Depending on the difficulty of the search, this can be either more or less cost-effective for you. If the document you are seeking is difficult to find, you will spend less money by ordering it from New Register House, as their fee is on a per document basis, while Record Inspector's is per hour.Combination
These service types can be combined. Contact us on for details.Other
Since beginning this service, we have had requests for services not currently listed here. These include visits to the National Archives of Scotland and other similar facilities, as well as research into ships' manifests and passenger lists, land holdings, etc. we are happy to undertake such searches, and at the moment, we are doing so at the same £25/hour search fee, but visits to these other facilities has to date been infrequent. Please contact us on for more information.*Not guaranteed;
**some documents are available to view but are still difficult or impossible to read.
