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, three pieces of guidance have been issued on Freedom of Information:

Guidance on Freedom of Information, publication schemes and paid research services (PDF, 0.05Mb)

Guidance on assessing whether deposited private archive collections are covered by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (PDF, 0.10Mb)

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 (DOC, 1.05Mb)

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 Archives Sector Development 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

Magistrates' Courts record retention schedule (PDF, 0.47Mb)

Coroners' records

OSP6: Records created by and relating to coroners 1970 - 2000 (PDF, 0.15Mb)

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

The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 3444. Contact us