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The National Archives manages The Command and Other Papers Contract, which provides a range of production and publishing services to support government organisations. The National Archives' publishing contractor is The Stationery Office Ltd.

You can use as many, or as few, of the production services offered under the contract as you wish. In line with Government Procurement Service requirements, you can also purchase services such as design, typesetting and/or print services elsewhere and combine them with the contract's services.

The exception to this is publishing services. Government organisations must use the Command and Other Papers Contract to publish House of Commons (HC) Papers. In addition, Command Papers should be published through the contract to ensure publishing requirements are met, so that the paper is recognised by the library community and book trade.

The current contract expires 30 September 2013.  Working with the Government Procurement Service, plans for new arrangements are in hand. This process includes consultation and briefings for contract users and procurement officials. In the meantime, if further information is required, please contact official.publishing@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk.

Services supporting publication include:

  • allocating an ISBN, cover price, barcode and other publisher imprint information (publishing furniture) to be included in the paper
  • checking that the latest Crown copyright and re-use statement is included where applicable
  • liaising with Parliament on the number of print copies it requires
  • delivering print copies to Parliament to be available for members just after laying
  • checking that a paper's web PDF meets Cabinet Office digital standards
  • fulfilling statutory legal deposit requirements
  • creating and maintaining a full bibliographic record for supply to the book trade and users of the publications

On the date specified the publishing contractor will publish a paper in print and online. It will fulfill orders for print copies, including standing orders, and publish a paper's PDF on Official Documents, the dedicated website for parliamentary papers. After publication the contractor will fulfill ad hoc orders for print copies.

Find out more about the contract's project management and publishing fee structure in the Fees matrix. All fees include publishing services. Only the monochrome scale includes print costs.

Fees matrix (PDF, 0.00Mb)

Preparing web PDFs for the Official Documents website

All Command and House of Commons Papers must be published in print and on the Official Documents website.

Follow the guidance in Official Documents website PDF specification information to ensure PDFs meet the requirements for UK Government websites on accessibility.

Official Documents website PDF specification information (PDF, 0.07Mb)

The 'publish-only' option

These additional factors apply to papers made available through the contractor's publish-only option. Organisations using this option need to:

  • contact the contractor early on to obtain and check the inclusion of publishing imprint details, ISBN and cover price
  • deliver appropriately labelled and packaged print copies to the contractor for supply to Parliament
  • provide the contractor with final print and web PDFs to the required standard before the publication date

Publishing un-numbered Act Papers

Please see the Journal Office guidance for advice on publishing un-numbered Act Papers. These papers should also include the correct copyright and re-use statement on page 2 of the document (the title verso page).

The only publishing requirement applying to these papers is that they must be published online. Those from central government must be published on the Official Documents website. Central government organisations that have not used The National Archives' contractor for production services should send the appropriate web PDF to The National Archives for inclusion on the Official Documents website.                                                                                                           

Un-numbered Act Papers produced by organisations outside central government are not eligible for inclusion on the Official Documents site. The documents should be published on the authoring organisation's own website, or that of its parent department.

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