Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which organisation has oversight of deed poll name changes; and whether records are stored of enrolled and non-enrolled deed poll name changes.
The Ministry of Justice is the department which oversees the Regulations governing changes of name by enrolled deed and the law on non-enrolled deeds, commonly referred to as deed polls.
Applications for an enrolled deed confirming a person’s change of name are submitted to the Queen’s Bench Division of the Royal Courts of Justice. Upon being issued, the name change is published as a notice in the London Gazette and a record is stored at the Royal Courts of Justice, before being transferred to the National Archives after a period of 5 years.
Name changes made by an unenrolled deed are executed privately; no record of their occurrence is publicly available, or held by the Government, unless the person is required by law to notify the police of such a change.