Obtaining your Gender Recognition Certificate
Obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate is a somewhat traumatic experience as it forces you revisit elements of your past life which you may prefer to forget. Nonetheless, like everything connected with gender transition, it is a challenge to be faced up to if you are to be given the full protection of the law. Issuing of the certificates is controlled by the Gender Recognition Panel, part of the Tribunal Service.
The Tribunal Service provides a very clear application form for download with accompanying instructions. Additional information and a flow chart of the steps through the process may be found on the Press for Change website.
When you submit the completed form you need to accompany it with:
• A Statutory Declaration: Suitable templates may be found on this website. Choose the appropriate one and modify to suite your circumstances. This can be sworn before any solicitor who will typically charge £15. A magistrate can also swear this for you but the cost is likely to be a little lower at £8.
• Medical reports: There is no need for your doctors to use the form form provided, so long as it is clear that the information provided applies to you; all the UK specialists are well aware of the process so do not insult them by presenting them with the form (despite the instruction on the first page to do so). It is important to ensure that the report from the specialist is clear and unequivocal about your intention to live thenceforth and permanently in your adopted gender. The doctors are at liberty to charge up to £200 for each report, even if you are being treated under the NHS. Expect to pay at least £30. Note the requirements for this specialist to be a member of the GRC.
• Evidence of gender role: Providing high quality evidence that you have lived permanently in your preferred gender for at least two years is key. This is discussed in more detail here.
Once you have assembled all the required information, send it with the completed form to the Panel. The civil servant will vet the information provided for compliance with the guidelines, copy it and return all the originals (apart from the statutory declaration) to you. Note, just because they inform you that the information you have provided meets the basic criteria, this does not mean that when the judicial panel meets they will approve your application. Your application will now be placed in a queue to be considered in due course by the panel. This may take some time.
You can normally expect to hear the day after the panel has considered your application. If you are successful a certificate will be dispatched to you by first class post; if you are not you will receive the panel directions explaining why your application fell short. The civil servants will normally be able to advise you of the date of the meeting when your application is to be heard. The certificate is sent in a cardboard backed A4 envelope which may not fit in your letterbox—the Tribunal Service is not responsible for any damage to the certificate after they have handed it to the Royal Mail.
You can now get a new birth certificate reflecting your affirmed gender. The short certificate is issued free of charge. This will include the details of the date, place of birth and parentage on your original birth certificate, together with your affirmed gender and new name.
There is also the option for the new birth certificate to show your birth surname, if this is different from the surname on your gender recognition certificate. You will also be able to buy an additional full birth certificate, if you want to.
Your original birth certificate will remain in existence, but will not be available for the public to see.
If after review of the material you provided, the panel decides not to approve the application, they can either reject the application outright, or more likely issue a set of “panel directions”. The professed aim of the Panel is to grant applications, wherever legally possible, which is why directions are given rather than making final decisions which might not be in favour of the applicant.
The directions the form of a letter explaining, maybe in a somewhat Delphic manner, the concerns the panel had with the application and what additional information they feel should be provided. You should be aware that, if you supply the requested information and ask to for the application to be reconsidered, the members of the panel will probably be different and will not be bound in any way by the history of the application. Also note that the panel is not permitted to contact any of your medical referees (despite the suggestion otherwise in the application form); they will judge the merits of your case solely from a pedantic reading of the evidence presented. If you are rejected because your Category A documents are insufficiently old and the totality of your other evidence is not deemed adequate you can always reapply after six months have elapsed—so all is not lost.
Interim Gender Recognition Certificates are issued solely for the purpose of annulling a marriage or a civil partnership to permit issuance of a full certificate. They are only valid for six months during which time court proceedings must have been started. Interim certificates only have meaning if the marriage or civil partnership is registered in the United Kingdom. Applicants who live overseas need to make sure the panel understands the circumstances of the marriage i.e. it took place in the UK, or they will refuse to proceed.
The court that anulls your marriage will issue you with a full Gender Recognition Certificate along with the decree absolute. The court is provided with a blank certificate by the GRP when they are advised that your case is to be adjudicated—they will complete it on that day. Make sure the court remembers to afix their seal as without it the certificate is worthless. The court will send a copy of the certificate to the Tribunal Service for their records and to trigger the notification of the General Register and HMRC of your new legal status.
Interim Certicates cannot be extended
The Gender Recognition Panel has now ruled definitively that an Interim Gender Recognition Certificate cannot be renewed or extended for the following reasons:
1. “The Gender Recognition Act provided a specific period of 6 months to apply for a decree of nullity or divorce. It is assumed that the legislators wanted to limit the period within which a person should have an interim certificate. Either an applicant should have a full or no certificate. An interim certificate is a means to an end i.e. to obtain a full certificate and not intended to be a permanent order.”
2. “Where the period of 6 months has elapsed an applicant can make a fresh application for a Gender Recognition Certificate and would need to comply with the evidential requirements of the Act. In doing so they could presumably use the existing medical evidence whilst making a new statutory declaration and updating the documents to show that the applicant was living in their acquired gender at the time of the new application.”
In the case of loss or damage to the certificate a certifed copy of the original may be obtained without cost from the panel.
The General Register Office holds and maintains the Gender Recognition Register, from which new and duplicate birth certificates in the affirmed name and gender can be obtained. The address is:
General Register Office
Room C202
Smedley Hydro
Trafalgar Road
SouthPort
PR8 2HH
Tel: +44 (0) 151 471 4821.
Fax: +44 (0) 151 471 4755
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