Archives advisory services

Introduction

Advice & guidance

Advice for record keepers

Advice for places of deposit

Archive lottery service

Standards

Statistics & surveys

Sales monitoring

Cataloguing Grants Programme

Public Services Quality group

Contacts

The National Archives

Advice for record keepers

We offer advice on all aspects of the care of both private and public records. We have produced a number of general publications that will be useful for archivists, custodians and owners of records, as well as advice on particular groups of records. For information on public records and caring for them in places other than The National Archives see advice for places of deposit. Our policy and legislation section contains further guidance on legislation that has an impact on record keeping.

General

Planning a new record repository(40kb)
Applying for grant-aid(88kb)
Protecting archives and manuscripts against disasters(49kb)
Guidance note for record repositories: Terms of loan (deposit) for privately owned archives(44kb)
Archive collection policy statements: Checklist of suggested contents(39kb)
Surveying historical manuscripts: some guidelines(44kb)
Advice available to private owners and custodians of manuscripts(31kb)
Guidance on surveying archive collections. This document also supports the reappraisal of material relating to the history of the Caribbean and of Black and Asian people in the UK.

Freedom of Information

Procedures and guidance relating to public records transferred to and held by Places of Deposit

The guidance is available in pdf format(960kb)

Guidance on assessing whether deposited private archive collections are covered by the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

This guidance is available in pdf format(99kb)

Guidance on Freedom of Information, Publications scheme and paid research services.

This guidance is available in pdf format(52kb)

The following publications produced by other organisations may also be relevant. If they are not available online they can be obtained free of charge from our National Advisory Services

Guidance on local authority records

Local Government Act 1972: Section 224 Guidance on '...proper arrangements' for archives (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 3/3/2000)
Guidance on the care, preservation and management of records following changes arising from the Local Government Act 1992 (Dept of National Heritage, July 1995)
Records Management Society - Local Government Group: Retention guidelines for local authorities

Guidance on the records of private hospitals, hospices and independent health care providers

Department of Health - Independent Health Care: National Minimum Standards Regulations, 2002. (See Core Standard 7: Records and information management).
Records of private patients admitted to NHS authorities: HSC 1999/53 "For the Record"

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