Tracing Family History 

Charges

SEARCH FEES- one request or enquiry

Berkshire or Surrey Archives- £30 per hour

London Archives- £40 per hour

SEARCH FEES- bespoke research 

Berkshire or Surrey Archives- from £50 (minimum 2 hours)

London Archives- from £70 (minimum 2 hours)

Terms & Conditions

Terms are strictly payment in advance.  Methods of payment accepted:

• Bank Transfer (sort code + account number or IBAN number will be provided)
• Credit Card via Paypal (via a payment request which I would generate) to enable you to make secure credit card payments or to pay in international currencies.   If you wish to pay by Paypal, please do not attempt to send payment before you have received my payment request.  No surcharge levied for payments via Paypal.

Search fees do not include travelling costs or costs associated with using a digital camera or photography equipment (which varies for different archives). These costs will be calculated and added when sending a quote/ invoice. 

Costs will be calculated at 30p per mile for travelling to all Berkshire and Surrey Archives by car. 

Costs will be calculated per return ticket or travelcard for travelling to all London Archives by train from Ascot or Bracknell via London Waterloo station and or London Underground.

Extra charges for parking may be applicable for both car and train journeys.

A receipt for bank transfer payments is sent by e-mail.

Paypal payments are confirmed by Paypal; an acknowledgment is also sent by e-mail.

All quotes provided are valid for 3 months.

No extra costs are charged for the time taken to write up a report, prepare quotes or invoices, or for correspondence. 

Reports and Photographs

Reports are sent by email in all cases. I regret that I can not post paper copies of reports.

Digital photos, sent in a zipped folder by e-mail via Google Drive.

Data Protection and Privacy of Clients

I respect your privacy and will never pass your details to any other individual or company. Your reports remain confidential and will not be published on any social media or web sites or shared with other clients.

Research undertaken at the archive(s) will usually be completed and reported upon by e-mail within a maximum of 6 weeks of receipt of payment

All photos and copies are for personal research purposes only.  If you wish to publish any photo or copy (including on a website) you must obtain written permission from the relevant archive and, if necessary, the copyright holder, in advance of publication.

Clients requesting amendments to booked searches:

Once a search has been booked and paid for, it will be scheduled into my diary and preparatory work will begin.  This may involve catalogue checks or pre-ordering or assessment of original documents.  Occasionally a client will contact me after a search has been booked, advising that the information they were seeking has been made available to them via a contact or another source and requesting that the fee paid be transferred to another search.  At my discretion I’ll usually continue to agree to do this, although the following conditions will apply:

No amendments are permitted to orders placed for a GRO birth, marriage or death certificate or post-1858-20th cent. will searches or orders:   Once a client has paid for a BMD certificate or for a post-1858 will search, no amendment can be made.  This is because orders for BMD certificates and wills are placed through an external website and once I have placed and paid for the order, I cannot request amendment or cancellation.

Any cancellation of a search request must be requested by email within 3 days of payment being made. No cancellation is permitted after this date as preparations for searching will have commenced.

Any amendment to a search must be requested within 7 days of payment being made.   No amendment is permitted after this date.  At my discretion, amendments requested within 7 days will be permitted.  In the event of amendment being requested, the search fee can be transferred to another search but no refunds can be made.

Changes requested later than 7 days after payment:  not permitted as preliminary work will have been completed and your search will be in hand.

Special arrangements applying to searches at the National Archives:

It is not possible to obtain paper copies of any entries found in any  records at the National Archives which have been microfilmed or digitized or which are viewed on microfiche.  Instead of paper copies, clients will receive a digital copy of any relevant entry which accompanies their report.  If it is not possible to provide a digital copy by e-mail, a full transcription of the entry will be provided, together with a photograph of the entry taken from the microfilm or microfiche reader or from the computer screen (n.b. the quality of such photos is not as good). 

Digital photos:

I can provide digital photos at record offices where digital photography by researchers is permitted. 

Clients receive photos through zipped file in Google Drive. Please remember to download and save your photos to your files or a USB stick, as I don't retain copies for longer than 3 months. 

Permission to photograph specific material is granted at the discretion of the archivist on duty at the particular archive being visited.

A fee for the use of personal digital cameras is charged at most archives per day and any such fee is payable by the client on each occasion photographs are taken.

Where digital photography by researchers is not permitted, and the document cannot be photocopied, it is sometimes possible to order digital scans and these are supplied at cost.

Sometimes a search will result in the person/family not being found where expected.  No refund can be made in such cases as a visit will have been made to the record office and the search made.   

* * * * *   When providing information prior to a search   * * * * *  

• please check carefully that you have accurately copied the details from your source - double check for unnoticed transposition of numerals in dates;
• when forwarding the details to me (by whatever means) please check once again that the details you are supplying are correct;
• if your source is extracted from a website, please specify the name of the website and the original source it came from (it should be listed). If possible, please provide a url to the source.