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Records Archiving Procedure

It is a fundamental requirement that all NHS records are retained for a minimum period, for legal, operational, research and safety reasons. This document intends to provide NHS East Midlands employees with a clear procedure to be used when archiving organisational records.

Scope

For the purpose of this procedure “records” refer to:

All corporate and administrative records including personnel, estates, financial and accounting and complaints
Reports and independent enquiries
Policies and procedures
Public involvement and consultation
Regular publications and information for the public
Communications with the press and media releases

Retention Periods

The length of time we retain records within the NHS is dependant upon the type and importance of the record to organisational business. In order to archive records effectively NHS East Midlands has adopted specific retention periods set out in the Department of Health Records Management: NHS Code of Practice.

A copy of the current retention schedule can be accessed via the Department of Health’s website on the following link:

http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_093028.pdf

In addition, further guidance can be viewed via:

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4131747

These periods reflect minimum requirements based on legal and other requirements.

There will be some records held by NHS East Midlands that do not have a retention period stated in the schedule or a note will have been placed in the minimum retention column indicating that some issues are for ‘Local decision’ making.

In these cases, recommendations must be presented to the Information Governance Workstream Lead for evaluation and where necessary these recommendations will be ratified by NHS East Midlands Information Governance Steering Group.

Archiving Process

To ensure that records that require archiving are boxed, tagged and recorded correctly the following process must be used:

Make sure the records are inactive (i.e., not consulted by you or your Directorate on a regular basis).
Only approved boxes may be used to store archive records.
Contact Carole James or Ally Moore to obtain suitable boxes for archiving records.
All files or groups of records placed into an approved storage box must be listed with a brief description of the subject matter and destruction date.
Always use precise descriptions and dates when listing records. Do not use acronyms, abbreviations or NHS jargon when listing records.
Do not pack records with widely different retention periods, or from more than one office, in the same box.
Complete a Record Label (attached) for each box. Affix label to box lid. Failure to correctly complete this information will mean that the material cannot be effectively archived and will there be returned.
Do not tape the box lids shut
Each archive box must have an identified destruction date. Destruction dates can be determined by the use of the approved Retention and Disposal Schedule
When the boxes have been packed and are ready for transport, please contact Carole James or Ally Moore, who will organise the off-site storage provider to pick up the boxes and ensure that boxes and their contents are centrally collated with a box number.
Archived material will then be collected via Derwent Logistics who will issue each box with a unique archive barcode. These barcodes will then be correlated with issued box numbers and recorded on a central database maintained by Octavia House reception to allow effective retrieval when necessary.

Retrieval Process

In order request the retrieval of archived material the following process must be used:

Contact Carole James or Ally Moore (Octavia House Reception Team) quoting an accurate description of the required archived material. Once requested a member of the reception will organise retrieval and contact the requestor when the archive material is delivered.

A central log will be maintained by Octavia reception Team to track retrieved information.