men the Annual reports of the Registrar General became a vehicle for administrative and social reform. In 1840 the GRO also took over responsibility for the decennial census of England and Wales. In 1871, the GRO came under the supervision of the Local Government Board. During the First World War the GRO was responsible for co-ordinating National Registration, which underpinned recruitment to the armed forces, the movement of workers into the munitions industries, and rationing. National Registration was not, however, continued after the war and the GRO was absorbed into the Ministry of Health in 1919. Departmental responsibility In 1970 the GRO became part of the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), with the Registrar General in overall charge. Until then it had had several statistical functions, including the conduct of population censuses and the production of annual population estimates; all these were moved elsewhere within the new organisation. The GRO then became a division within OPCS, headed by a Deputy Registrar General. Then in 1996 the OPCS, and therefore the GRO, became part of the newly created Office for National Statistics, and the office of Registrar General was merged with that of Head of the Government Statistical Service. Becoming part of the Home Office On 1 April 2008, the General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) became a subsidiary of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), then an executive agency of the Home Office. The decision to make the transfer of GRO to IPS was finalised following the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007. The move followed changes to make Office for National Statistics (ONS) more independent of the British Government, which included relinquishing the registration role. In 2013, IPS was renamed HM Passport Office, while remaining an agency of the Home Office. Location From its beginnings in 1836, the General Register Office was based within the North Wing of Somerset House in London. There it remained until 1970 when it moved within London to St Catherine's House on Kingsway. For a short time after the move the death records were stored at Alexandra House (on the opposite side of Kingsway), until room was found for all the records at St Catherine's House. In 1997 the GRO staff were moved to Southport, Merseyside while public access to the records and indexes was made available at a new Family Records Centre (FRC) in Clerkenwell.