Sources of personal information
In my piece in the January Oldie, I mentioned that there are some easily available sources of personal information - all legal, all in the Public Domain. Here are a few - if you can add any, please feel free to do so. I'll add more as I think of them.
192.com
This is the biggest and widest collection of links and information. Not everything it supplies is free, but from it you can find, amongst other things:
Electoral Roll 2002-2007
Directory Enquiries
Births, Marriages, Deaths (and hence mother's maiden names...)
Census Records
Company Reports
Director Reports
Upmystreet.com
This site will allow you to see what prices houses in your area (or any other area have recently sold for - culled from the Land Registry. There is also a lot of other statistical information about your area, like population, local income and so forth.
motinfo.gov.uk
Here you can check if a car in which you have a legitimate interest has a valid MOT Certificate.
Companies House
From here you can download all the public information about any Limited or Public Limited Company, including Directors and Shareholder details.
The London Gazette
The Official Newspaper of Record for the United Kingdom. Information is grouped into the following categories: State, Parliament, Ecclesiastical, Public Finance, Transport, Planning, Health, Environment, Water, Agriculture & Fisheries, Energy, Post & Telecom, Competition, Corporate Insolvency, Personal Insolvency, Companies & Financial Regulations, Partnerships, Societies Regulation, Personal Legal.
Each category contains a number of sub-categories, which may then be broken down into notice types to enable users to find the information they need. Please see Browse Notices for more information.
A number of supplements are published; the best-known are:
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Honours and Awards supplements (including the Queen’s Birthday and New Year Honours and awards for valour),
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Ministry of Defence Supplement (officer’s appointments, promotions and similar within the Services),
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Queen’s Awards for Enterprise and Voluntary Service.
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The weekly Company Law Official Notifications (best known for striking off and dissolutions),
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The annual Premium Bond Unclaimed Prizes Supplement.
Court Lists
Find out what is going on (and who is appearing) in your local Courts.