Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Legal issues > Public Records Acts
Public Records Acts
Public Records are defined as the records of central government in the United Kingdom and its constituent countries, and of the central courts of law, including bodies under the government such as the national museums and the National Health Service. Most records selected for permanent preservation are open on transfer and, since freedom of information legislation, many are transferred earlier than the traditional 30 years after cessation of use. They are selected, preserved and made available to the public under the authority of the Public Records Act 1958, the Public Records (Scotland) Act 1937, the Public Records Act (Northern Ireland) 1923 and the Government of Wales Act 1998.
The public record acts are important to repositories collecting personal archives because the boundaries between public and private records are often blurred. This is particularly true where the personal archives of politicians and political parties are concerned, and especially true when dealing with the archives of the governing party and its members. This overlap affects the records that can be accessioned: for example, some of the records created by the London offices of Labour politicians participating in Paradigm are captured by public records legislation and will be transferred to The National Archives. There may also be cases where personal archives contain similar information to public records held by The National Archives (formerly known as the Public Record Office). In cases such as these the status of the related material must be considered when applying closure periods to material.
England and Wales
The Public Record Office Act of 1838 (c94) placed the records of the Chancery in the custody of the Master of the Rolls. It also empowered him to take custody of other public records, uniting scattered records at a new Public Record Office (PRO). Records of government departments were not covered by the 1838 Act, though many departments did transfer older records to the PRO.
The main provision of the Public Records Act of 1877 was the description of a procedure for the destruction of public records without value. However the formula prescribed by the 1877 Act was unduly complex and, as a result, records which should have been scheduled for destruction were rarely disposed of.
In June 1952 the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Master of the Rolls appointed a Committee (known as the Grigg Committee after its Chairman Sir James Grigg) to assess the existing provision for public records. The recommendations of the 1954 report (Cmd 9163) were largely accepted by the Government and resulted in the Public Records Act 1958 (c51) which repealed the 1838-1898 Acts in their entirety. The new Act transferred responsibility for public records and the PRO to the Lord Chancellor, and allocated responsibility for the day-to-day management of the PRO to a Keeper of Public Records. The scope of the Act was extended to include the records of government departments and those of other bodies enacted by Parliament to execute public work. It also provided a general public right of access to records which had been held in the PRO for 50 years; the 50-year closure period was reduced to 30 years by the Public Records Act 1967 (c44). The public's right to access public records was altered again by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c36) which stipulated that information contained in public records should be open from creation, unless subject to one of the exemptions laid out in the Act.
Northern Ireland
The Public Records Act Northern Ireland 1923 established the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI) for the 'reception and preservation of public records appertaining to Northern Ireland'. It set out the responsibilities of public record bodies in Northern Ireland to transfer select records, defined in s.1(2), to PRONI where they would be preserved.
Scotland
The character of The Public Records (Scotland) Act 1937 is different to the legislation governing records in England and Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Act does not define 'public records' or impose any statutory duty to transfer records to the National Archives of Scotland; it merely allows records relating exclusively or mainly to Scotland to be transferred to the Keeper of the Records of Scotland.
