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Birth Certificates for England have had a new design since 1st January 2000. The design, which also applied to still-birth certificates, death certificates, and Welsh birth, still-birth and death certificates, differs from the previous design in the use of background.

The colour of the background has changed from a red tint background for English and Welsh birth certificates and grey tint background for death certificates from England and Wales, to a blue tint background for both.

There was also a new graphic as an integral part of the design, which uses both the national rose emblem of England and the national daffodil emblem of Wales.

This was the first major change for the design of certificates for the past 50 years, when the existing red background tints were introduced. There were revisions before this, but they have been minor revisions.

The new certificates were begun to be issued from Spring of 2000 from the local register offices (registry offices) of England and Wales. From the General Register Office (part of the Office for National Statistics or ONS), new certificates were issued once the previous design stocks were depleted.

Certificates issued prior to 2000 remain valid.

English and Welsh certificates currently issued have a watermark which incorporates a crown image and the initials of the GRO. The colour of the Seal of the Register Office varies according to the type of the certificate.

The size of a full or short certificate now should be A4 size. However, this may not apply to certificates recording Welsh events which have been issued as bilingual certificates.

Over four million certificates are issued each year.

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