Advice to Places of Deposit

Under the Public Records Act, public records may be deposited in places other than The National Archives by agreement between the Lord Chancellor and the relevant authority. There are currently over 200 "Places of Deposit", and The National Archives has a statutory role to help monitor and raise standards of archival provision in these organisations.

Access to records

The National Archives provides guidance on the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information. In particular, two pieces of guidance have been issued on Freedom of Information:

Available in PDF format (PDF, 55.31kb)

Available in PDF format (PDF, 104.64kb)

Available in PDF format (PDF, 407.47kb)

Records management advice and guidance

It is a good idea to look at our records management advice and guidance section, as many of the standards published there are relevant to Places of Deposit. They cover topics such as disposal schedules, best practice guidance, and cataloguing guidelines.

Commercial digitisation

This guidance is aimed primarily at archives which have been appointed as places of deposit under the Public Records Act 1958, and wish to digitise public records in their custody but which may also be found useful by other services.

Licensing digital images to commercial publishers (RTF, 3101.21kb)

Older guidance

Before becoming The National Archives, the Public Record Office produced two pieces of guidance on the identification and management of public records. Whilst they have been superseded by other guidance and do not take into account new legislation such as Freedom of Information, they still, nevertheless, contain useful information. Updated guidance will be published in due course and made available on this website.

Available in PDF format (PDF, 238.56kb)

Available in PDF format (PDF, 191.25kb)

Guidance on specific types of public records

The National Archives and other Government departments have produced guidance on the management of various types of public records. The following documents can be obtained free of charge from National Advisory Services mailto:nas@nationalarchives.gov.uk or, where a link is provided, can be accessed online. We hope to make more of these documents available online in due course.

Quarter Sessions

Home Office Circular HOC 38/1968: Quarter Sessions records, 13 February 1968

Magistrates' Courts and Petty Sessions

Available in PDF format (PDF, 478.99kb)

Coroners' records

Download OSP6: Records created by and relating to coroners 1970 - 2000 (PDF, 152.90kb)

Prison records

This page contains PDF and RTF files. See plug-ins and file formats for help in accessing these file types.