FreeBMD is almost complete from the start of civil registration in 1837 up to about 1916. Coverage for later years is improving all the time.
Indexes of births, marriages and deaths registered in England and Wales from 1984 onwards can be found elsewhere on the web. I use ancestry.
23 May 2008: The 1890-1983 transcription has now been accepted by the
FreeBMD project, and these records can now be accessed by a normal FreeBMD search.