Many thanks for this - it summarises very well what I do, plus adds in a few other things.

There are also a number of online parish council projects for certain counties which provide more easily searchable databases and include extra info that is sometimes not available in the family search records e.g. the Lancashire OPC

I am also conscious that sometimes the transcription on familysearch is not the best in the world - and that actually looking at the actual records e.g the Yorkshire Parish records on Ancestry can reveal all sorts of additional information.

Does anyone have any idea as to the extent of coverage of the familysearch records for the UK - would I be correct in saying that if there are no parish records there then they are pretty much lost for ever, or are there still lots of other records to be transcribed and put on line?