Request
A list of the document titles of the 648 [ES series records] which were in TNA possession, and which were placed under review in 2018. I hope you will be able to indicate which were open or closed at the time of the review, and which 400 have since been returned?
Details on the status of ES 1/646 – Aircraft operations during GRAPPLE Z: No 76 Squadron reports.
Outcome
Information provided.
Response
Please note, ‘AUR’ is our acronym for “Access Under Review”. This is our term for when we temporarily suspend access to a record whilst it undergoes a review due to potentially sensitive material within.
For context, we have provided the following breakdown on the current status of the ES series of records, from 08 May 2024:
ES 1 contains 1,751 records in total. 1,003 of these were retained by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) when the series was made AUR. 648 records were listed in our catalogue, Discovery, as being held at TNA when the series was made AUR (Note: ten of these were not physically held by TNA but are described as having been “Destroyed before transfer”).
All records held by TNA were withdrawn from public access at TNA for review by MoD. MoD have since informed us that 421 records, from the 648 total, can be returned to public access – we received the most recent list at the end of April 2024, so these may not have been updated on Discovery yet. 227 files from the 648 total, including ES 1/646, are still AUR pending an outcome from review. All the ES 1 records held at TNA, prior to when the series was made AUR in 2018, were open. The exception to this was three closed extracts for personal information, that had been redacted from the parent pieces.
There are two attachments that provide further information for your request:
TNA_Search_Results_01-05-2024T13_28_14.csv provides a list of the document titles of the 648 which were in TNA possession, and which were placed under review in 2018. This list also includes the three closed extracts referenced previously, as well as ES 1/579 which was not held by TNA at the time, but has since been released. This document is drawn from the output from the search query on Discovery (which is available to the public) using the parameters below.
Find all of these words “ES 1” held by The National Archives Records by government creators ES – Atomic Weapons EstablishmentRecord closure status – tick both “Open” and “Closed”. Note that this is the current status, which for records yet to be reviewed is the status when the series was made AUR e.g. ES 1/646 currently shows on Discovery as “Closed whilst access is under review” but the established closure status is “Open Document, Open Description”. TNA systems confirm that no closures were in place for these records in the past beyond the three closed extracts.
ES 1 returned to public access 02052024.xlsx lists the reference number and title of the 421 records that MOD have returned to public access since the 2018 withdrawal.