Retention Periods for Records in Further Education in the United Kingdom
Introduction
This schedule was produced from a collaborative project undertaken by JISC, JISC infoNet and members of the Further Education community to provide guidance on the periods of time for which particular records must be retained by institutions. Section 46 of The Freedom of Information Act (2000) or Section 61 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the subsequent instruction from the Department of Constitutional Affairs require that Public Authorities make proper provision for the care and maintenance of the records they create during the course of their business. One essential part of that is knowing how long records need to be kept.
The aim was to be as comprehensive as possible, but to produce something which could be searched easily. Inevitably it will never be completely definitive, and is to be treated as a work in progress. Detailed information will change across time as legislation and regulation are changed. For this reason it was decided to mount the output as a searchable database accessible from the JISC infoNet website, which can in future be amended and extended as necessary. This master reference source can be used to provide the basic outline retention/destruction schedule for your institution and the database is available now both online (read-only) and as a downloadable spreadsheet. The development/release status of the database, and a link to the read-only version can be accessed here.
We suggest you revisit this database at 6 monthly intervals to check on any changes or additions. Changes will be versioned, dated and highlighted on the infoNet website.
We hope you will provide feedback and information (including errors and omissions) which will help to refine and improve the database.
The schedule has had to deal with three distinct areas of legislation and regulation;
- Legislation which applies throughout the UK
- Legislation which applies only to one or more of the constituent parts of the UK
- Educational Regulation particular to England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Wherever possible these variations have been indicated in the schedule.
