Documents
The history of the Public Records Act
The Public Record Office Act of 1838 was the first legislation to protect the records by creating an official archive. It was primarily concerned to make provision for the records of the Exchequer, Chancery and other ancient courts of law, which were brought together in a single repository, administered by professional staff in a new government department, but under the direction not of a minister but a judge, the Master of the Rolls.
The records held in government departments, whether current or non-current, were not covered by the act, but once a central archival authority existed, many departments transferred their older records into its care, or took advice from its staff on the sorting and weeding of them. An Order in Council in 1852 brought departmental records also under the charge and superintendence of the Master of the Rolls, to regularize these procedures. But the Public Record Office (PRO - now known as The National Archives) had no legal right to determine which departmental records were weeded out and which transferred; there was no provision for destroying any records in the Public Record Office; nor was there any legal provision for public access.
The Grigg Committee and The Public Records Act 1958
By the early 1950s concern was being expressed both about the qualities of records accumulating in departments, and (from the official historians) the records which has seemingly failed to survive the current destruction procedures. In June 1952 a committee was appointed jointly by the chancellor of the Exchequer and Master of the Rolls.
The chairman of this committee on departmental records was Sir James Grigg, a former permanent under secretary of the War Office. When the committee reported in 1954 (Cmd 9163), its principal conclusions were that:
- Responsibility for the selection and transfer to the PRO of records worthy of permanent preservation should rest with departments
- The PRO should be responsible for guidance, coordination and supervision of these processes
- New legislation was required to transfer responsibility for the PRO from the Master of the Rolls to a minister, and to implement other of the committee's recommendations
- Most records should pass through a system of first and second reviews, the first determining which should be preserved for the department's own purposes, five years after the records had passed out of active use, and the second, twenty five years after the initial date of the record, determining, in a joint decision between the department and the PRO, which should be preserved permanently on grounds of departmental need and historical requirement
- Records in the PRO should be opened to general public inspection when they were 50 years old, unless special considerations dictated a different period of closure
- Responsibility for arrangements within departments should rest with the director of establishments, or with an officer of equivalent status
- Each department should appoint a departmental record officer to be responsible for its records from the time they were created or first reviewed until their destruction or transfer to the PRO
- A records administration officer should be appointed in the PRO, supported by a number of inspecting officers, to carry out the PRO's responsibilities as described above
- Cinematograph films, photographs and sound recordings should be treated as public records
The government announced their acceptance of the main recommendations in July 1955; the first records administration officer (RAO) was appointed in December of that year, and the first four inspecting officers (IOs) in the autumn of 1956. The Treasury had issued a circular to establishment officers earlier in 1956 directing them to appoint departmental record officers (DROs), and, in conjunction with the RAO and IOs, to make arrangements for working over existing papers during the coming five years, and to introduce the new reviewing procedures.
A Public Records Bill to provide the statutory framework for the new system, and for the new relationship between the PRO and departments, was introduced into the House of Lords in November 1957. It received the Royal Assent on 23 July 1958, and came into force on 1 January 1959. It transferred responsibility for public records and the PRO to the Lord Chancellor, and placed the day to day management of the PRO in the hands of a Keeper of Public Records. For the first time a statutory, general public right of access was given after 50 years (with arrangements for exceptions) to public records transferred to the PRO or to a place of deposit elsewhere appointed by the Lord Chancellor.
Top of pageThe Public Records Act 1967 and the Thirty Year Rule
Early in 1966 the government announced that they were considering proposals to reduce the general closure period, and that records relating to the First World War and created before the beginning of 1923 were to be made available for public inspection forthwith under the existing legislation. In August 1966 they announced and agreed proposal to reduce the 50 year closure period to 30 years. A new Public Records Bill was introduced into the House of Lords in April 1967, and received the Royal Assent in July. It took effect on 1 January 1968.
The introduction of the 30 year rule focussed attention on the need to identify sensitive papers of all kinds and for the Lord Chancellor, with the approval or at the request of their originating departments, to give them additional protection. In the eight years from 1959 to 1967 thirteen Lord Chancellor's Instruments to open or close records were made. During the following eight years from 1968 to 1976, a further 33 were made.
Following the precedent of the exercise conducted on records of the First World War, the records of the Second World War and the immediate post war period down to the end of 1945 were made available to public inspection as a block at the beginning of 1972. However, WWII Service personnel records remain closed.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000
The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act was passed in November 2000 and came fully into force on 1st January 2005. The FOI Act replaced those parts of the Public Records Act that related to access to records. The amendments have the effect of replacing the old regime, under which records were closed for 30 years unless the Lord Chancellor set a longer or a shorter period, with the Freedom of Information access regime. The provisions under which public records must be transferred to The National Archives by the time they are 30 years old, unless they are retained in the department with the approval of the Lord Chancellor, remain unaffected.
