Clear Retention and Disposal Arrangements Sample Clauses

Clear Retention and Disposal Arrangements. (Know when to keep it and when to bin it.) The Council needs to know what it has to keep and for how long. In some cases records such as asbestos have retention periods of over 40 years. The retention guidelines that will be agreed within services will address their business needs as well as their service specific statutory requirements. In some cases, the Council has to retain records permanently and these will be transferred to the Durham County Record Office;

Clear Retention and Disposal Arrangements. The development of retention guidelines by services is required so that records can be disposed of in a documented and controlled way. This is necessary for records in both paper and electronic format and will minimise the amount of information we keep. Using the pro forma found at Appendix C will help you to identify the major groups of records you use. You will then be able to determine the correct retention by using the available guidance or advice from the Information Management Team. Confidential and sensitive records must be disposed of by shredding and a log of the disposal created. Guidance on logging the records can be found on the Records Management Guidance page on the Intranet. Other records created in the normal course of business may be disposed of by recycling. This may be information that is duplicated, unimportant or only of short-term business value such as: ‘with compliments’ slips, telephone message slips, working papers which lead to a final report, messages or notes not related to a business transaction etc. Guidance on the retention of records is available at: Retention Guidelines for Local Authorities. Examples of what to do and what to avoid are: Do: • Develop your own service specific retention guidelines using the guidance available from the Information Management Team or your Information Governance Group representative; • Include Records Management as part of your internal audit process to ensure that consistency, compliance and legal requirements are met; • Try and reduce the number of records which no longer have on- going business value in order to reduce the risk and cost of storage; • Keep a log of the confidential records you have disposed of to create an audit trail. Guidance on ‘Managing Paper Records’ can be found on the Intranet page under Records Management Guidance. Always dispose of confidential information by shredding. Don’t: • Destroy records if there is a possibility of litigation, the records and information that are likely to be affected should not be amended or disposed of until the threat of litigation has been removed. • Retain information ‘just in case’, set a retention period using the guidelines provided or advice from the Information Management Team; • Place confidential information in normal rubbish bins.