Opening hours for GRO Research Room to be decided weekly.

    No pasarán at the GRO this Thursday afternoon

Apologies to anyone who thought they'd pop down to the GRO's Research Room today after reading my blogpost last week announcing that said Room would be open Tuesday to Thursday to walk-in visitors in future. 

It was certainly open three days last week, but what the GRO failed to announce or make sufficiently clear is that they are announcing their opening hours on a week-by-week basis.

Well, how very customer-unfocussed is that?

You could reasonably imagine the site had been hacked reading such a nonsense. No explanation or apology to researchers either. 

This is the civil service we're talking about. If the GRO were a commercial enterprise it would have returned to normal hours by now, not taken the opportunity to reduce hours, enjoy 90-minute lunch breaks and choose which days they go to work.

This week's hours were Tuesday and Wednesday. Next week, who knows? You'll have to wait until Monday, or Tuesday (if you're lucky) to find out which days they've decided they are going to provide the service. The page to which they are posting the weekly update is here.

Don't risk turning up at the GRO office if you haven't checked that page.