WINCHESTER’S brides and grooms will be married at new premises following the opening of Hampshire County Council’s new register office.

The new centre, which also caters for civil partnerships, births, deaths and citizenship registrations, was unveiled at a special ceremony on Monday following months of renovation at Castle Hill.

The former offices at Station Hill has been sold to Winchester City Council and could be demolished in the forthcoming Station Approach redevelopment.

Mel Boyes, technical standards officer, said: “We outgrew the building and had the opportunity to move in here.”

As part of the move the register office has now merged with library services, increasing the 10 staff members to 16.

Sara Teers, head of libraries and registrations, said: “It’s about providing better value mainly to the tax payer by putting departments together.”

Winchester follows in the footsteps of similar mergers seen in Eastleigh, Gosport, Havant, Petersfield and Lymington.

“I’m absolutely delighted,” Ms Teers added. “It really provides an opportunity to do things differently. We were quite constrained in Station Hill. This gives us the chance to centralise services and we’re going to look at extending our opening hours and looking at other services in the meantime.”