Transactional and R&D licences

Request

This page of The National Archive’s website (last updated January 2025) explains the two types of licence (R&D and transactional) which can be granted on a case-by-case basis.

This page of the same website (last updated June 2025) provides further information about the application process for such a licence.

This Council of Europe report of April 2024 indicates at page 26 that the Ministry of Justice has developed guidelines for The National Archives to apply in reviewing applications for licences.

This September 2024 interview with John Sheridan of The National Archives indicates that the Transactional Licence has now been 'restyled' the Computational Analysis Licence.

1. Please provide any templates/standard terms and related guidance/playbooks held for the transactional or R & D or computational licences, beyond what is already published on The National Archives' website.
2. Please provide any information held concerning any intention, plan or proposal to harmonise the Open Justice Licence & the Open Supreme Court Licences.
3. Response to FOI request CAS-252683 of April 2025 indicates that one transactional licence request has been refused and that another one has been terminated.

Please provide any information held about the reasons for the refusal and termination in question. No names are sought, the intention behind this request is to help understand how the underlying policy applies in practice.

Outcome

Some information provided.

Response

1. Please provide any templates/standard terms and related guidance/playbooks held for the transactional or R & D or computational licences, beyond what is already published on The National Archives' website.

Please use the following link to access guidance provided by the Ministry of Justice to The National Archives entitled ‘guidance on application decisions for the transactional licence’.

Please use the following links to access a transactional license template and a research and development license template.

2. Please provide any information held concerning any intention, plan or proposal to harmonise the Open Justice Licence & the Open Supreme Court Licences.

A National Archives email chain is relevant to the request and this can be provided upon request. To request a PDF copy of this document please email us. To note, information identifying a junior member of staff (i.e., below head of department) has been redacted under s40(2). Please see the explanatory annex at the end for further details.

We can confirm that The National Archives has not proceeded any further with the harmonisation issue.

3. Response to FOI request CAS-252683 of April 2025 indicates that one transactional licence request has been refused and that another one has been terminated.

The National Archives rejected an application in which the potential re-user wanted to develop a means to allow members of the public to request a binary response concerning an individual’s criminal record for serious criminal offences based on publicly available court judgments. This was rejected for a number of reasons including a risk to undermine the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, a concern about an incomplete set of judgments forming the basis of such a re-use, since a ‘no’ would not give a conclusive response, and a substantial risk of the tool returning inaccurate information on a binary setting (‘yes/no’) in a context where we cannot currently have algorithms assured by third parties.

The transactional licence that was terminated was done at the request of the licensee as they were winding down their company.

Annexe

Exemptions applied

Section 40(2): Personal Information where the applicant is not the data subject

Section 40 exempts personal information about a ‘third party’ (someone other than the requester), if revealing it would breach the terms of Data Protection Legislation.

Data Protection Legislation prevents personal information from release if it would be unfair or at odds with the reason why it was collected, or where the subject had officially served notice that releasing it would cause them damage or distress. Personal information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner as set out by Art. 5 of the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

In this case, the exemption applies because the requested material contains information which would identify junior members of staff.

Publishing the names and contact details of junior members of staff is considered an unfair use of personal data. Junior members of staff would have no expectation that information about their positions would be made available in the public domain; to do so would be unfair and contravene the first data protection principle of the Data Protection Act. As such, the names, positions and contact details of junior officials are withheld under section 40(2) of the FOI Act.

Further guidance about the publication of junior staff names can be found here: Requests for personal data about public authority employees