The National Archives
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The National Archives is the UK government's official archive, containing over 1,000 years of history. We give detailed guidance to government departments and the public sector on information management and advise others about the care of historical archives.

  • Who we are

    Who we are

    Find out what The National Archives does, the records we hold and our history.

  • How we are run

    How we are run

    Find out how we are managed and governed, and read our plans, policies and annual report.

  • News

    News

    Read the latest news and document releases, and find information for members of the press.

  • Get involved

    Get involved

    Share your knowledge, apply for a job, volunteer, use our records commercially or tell us how we're doing.

  • Visit us

    Visit us

    See our opening times and what you should know before you arrive.

  • Freedom of information

    Freedom of information

    Find out how the Freedom of Information Act affects you and your research.

Facts and figures

  • 270,000,000
    online documents accessible through our UK Government Web Archive
  • 1,680,551
    free copies of records downloaded from our DocumentsOnline service in 2008-09
  • 100
    terabytes of space in our digital archive - enough for 1.5 billion A4 pages of text
  • 5
    % of government records are selected for preservation in our collection

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