Records Management Statement

2.0 Records Management Statement

The aim of records management for the Council is to ensure that:

  • The business of the Council is adequately documented to meet operational needs, accountability and statutory requirements and community expectations through effective policies and procedures for creating, managing, and disposing records.
  • Corporate records are adequately identified and described so that they can be appropriately managed, retrieved and stored throughout their life cycle; and that subsequent disposal, by archiving or destruction, should be in accordance with fully documented and approved corporate retention schedules.

The Council will manage its records by:

  • creating reliable, accurate, up to date information
  • ensuring that personal, sensitive and confidential information is held securely according to legislation 
  • ensuring records are disposed of by destruction or archiving according to the Records Retention and Disposal Schedule
  • records are fit for purpose and meet current and future administrative, regulatory and legislative needs and support the Council in its day to day business and future aims
  • ensuring business critical records are identified and preserved ensuring protection of vital information and ensuring business continuity
  • identifying records to be permanently preserved in the Council archives.
  • records are kept which will provide evidence of business and cultural activities
  • maintaining accurate records will help the Council to meet its statutory objectives and overall business responsibilities.

Good records management will benefit the Council by:

  • ensuring compliance with all relevant legislation thereby increasing public confidence in our ability to safeguard information and reducing the risk of being issued with enforcement notices or court fines ensuring information is held securely and accessed appropriately
  • ensuring information is retained as appropriate in accordance with data protection and freedom of information legislation and disposed of according to agreed retention schedules
  • allowing staff to adopt modern, efficient methods of working
  • achieving standardisation in record keeping across the Council to support continuity and consistency in practices across the Council
  • supporting the streamlining of processes across the Council
  • allowing staff to work across different services
  • saving once and sharing many times as appropriate
  • supporting digitisation and workflow
  • reducing the amount of storage space for paper records and server space for electronic records
  • enabling staff to find information easily
  • enabling staff to share information with confidence with appropriate security levels applied
  • enabling all staff to make informed decisions in good time using approved, good quality data and information
  • providing an audit trail to meet service users, business, regulatory and legal requirements
  • protecting the rights of employees, companies with whom the Council does business and the general public by keeping accurate, up to date, reliable information
  • duplication of records is avoided
  • digital continuity, future proofing and migration of records is done according to the best current available practices
  • vital records are identified to ensure business continuity
  • maintaining professional standards

A record is recorded information, in any form, created or received and maintained by the Council in the transaction of business or the conduct of affairs and kept as evidence of such activity. Records include charters, deeds, legal documents, minutes, reports, accounts, agreements, licenses, registers, project work, pupil, client and staff files etc.

For the purposes of the Council, a record is recorded information that has been created or received by the Council in the regular course of its business activities or in the pursuance of legal transactions.

As such all records are the property of the Council and not of the employee, agent, or contractor. This applies regardless of the physical location of the record, or whether it is held in off-site storage, in a computer or within a service provider’s system.

Public records are records created by public authorities, e.g. a local authority, in the course of conducting its business.  Records are created and kept as evidence of transactions, to satisfy statutory and regulatory requirements, to facilitate good business administration, to document decisions for current and future knowledge and for accountability. All records, whether paper or electronic, created or received by employees in the course of the Council’s business are the official records of the Council.

Records Management is a corporate function within the Council, and brings together responsibilities for all records held by the Council, from creation through to disposition.

Records Management is concerned with the systematic creation, capture, storage and retrieval of records throughout their lifecycle.  Records are dynamic and can move from being active to semi-active and closed, and sometimes by moving from being closed or semi-active again.

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