Hello everyone, i am post op and i have been now for 4 months coming upto 5 and things are going well at the moment.. i go back to work in a month time. Which will be great because i can finally start having some decent money coming back in.. so i can restart my electrolysis and so forth...

One of my main conserns tho is my new birth certificate. I know it is the most important thing i need to do because it is something i need for the future. As ID, I know the courts issue them.. But my question is :

Looking at the website it offers loads of information conserning the document itself but it does not state cost or how long it will take for me to receive it. Has anyone from the UK had to go through this and if you have how much did it cost you and how long did you have to wait ?

Thank you for your time in reading this because i have been told it will cost £3000 with a 5 year wait and that just seems so silly to me...

Thank you again Lea xx

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

I haven't applied for mine yet because I'm still married & divorce is a bit too expensive for me at the moment (and I'll be darned if I'm going to ask his permission to legally change my gender). But I'll presume you're fully aware that you can't get a new birth certificate until you've obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate.

However, I don't know where you've heard of £3000 & a 5-year wait; that doesn't tally up with anyone I know who has received their GRC. Nor are birth certificates issued by the courts; they're issued by the General Register Office. So what you're really looking for here is two separate documents: a Gender Recognition Certificate, followed by a Birth Certificate.

The Gender Recognition Panel is a tribunal that sits at least once a month, and they assess about 16 applications for Gender Recognition Certificates at each meeting. There's an application fee of £140 for the GRC, and it generally takes 14 weeks for them to hear your case and if you're successful, you get a certificate around 2 weeks later. It's very common for them to query your paperwork and to ask for more evidence, so it's worth your while to read up on their requirements and to over-supply if you can. Those queries add extra time to the process so it's good to avoid them.

If your application is successful, the Panel notifies the General Register Office that your gender has changed and they automatically send you a new short birth certificate - free of charge - complete with instructions on how to apply for a full birth certificate. The full birth certificate costs £9.25.

Here's where you apply for a GRC (in particular, have a good read of the guidance leaflet numbered T455 and T451); and here's a good overview of the process, including more info on birth certificates.

I did mine at the start of 2015. It cost £140 and took 3 months. Contact the Gender Panel and get the amazingly thick pack (most of which you can disregard).

You well need two medical reports, one from the GIC and the other from your GP. You will also need documentary evidence that you have been living in your acquired gender for two years. I sent about a dozen ORIGINAL documents to supposrt my application and they spanned the two year period so that it was obvious that I was living as me.

I sent my name change document (required) bank statements 6 months apart, HMRC letters, selected salary slips to fit into the gaps between the bank statement dates, my mammogram result and notarsied copies of my passport and driving licence. I threw in some utility bills for good measure.

Getting the notarised copies added a few pounds to my bill as did having additional declarartions witnessed by a solictor. The whole thing probably cost me £170.

Thank you for all that information.. i thought it was rediculas when i was told but it came from a friend who got hers.. so i wasnt sure.. but when she told me i thought to myself that it wasnt right, so i thought i would ask here...
You have been a great help FTMDiaries.. thank you.. it has saved me a lot of worries..

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Thank you vcjhyt. For the help.. it has been something i have been worrying about and when my friend told me it will cost £3000 and a 5 year wait it stressed me out but i thought that it couldnt be right... so i thought i would ask here... thank you again xc

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Glad I could help put your mind at rest.

It's possible that your friend was actually talking about the overall cost of her transition over & above what the NHS pays for - such as the cost of a new wardrobe, facial hair removal and perhaps even the cost of getting divorced (which used to be a requirement for a GRC) - and then all of that got turned into a lump sum with a long wait. If you think about it, it could very well take £3k & 5 years to do all of that, couldn't it?