What's the best practice for the retention of documents?

Question

Paper documents are a potential fire hazard.  Is it acceptable to take an electronic copy of paper documents and discard the paper original?  In the era where electronic data storage is cheap and accessible anywhere by the internet, it would seem a valid approach to discard all paper documents as soon as possible, provided that everyone continues to be able to access any document that they are authorised to view.
Another benefit of storing documents electronically is that better indexing methods can be used.  Such indexing, if well-designed, can increase accessibility to documents.  For documents created electronically there is the possibility for fully automated indexing.

Finally potentially removing paper storage from offices may reduce fire risk and thus insurance premiums.

What is the best practice that people have observed for town and parish councils with a limited budget?

Answer 1

Given the age of much local council legislation and the natural suspicion that electronic documents can disappear, I would think it advisable to keep hard copy of the critical documents, such as signed minutes, accounts and annual returns.

Otherwise, my view is that an electronic "cloud" service is a good way to provide storage and backup for documents. Last time I checked, the "Safe Harbor" provisions had been revoked for the USA, making Dropbox unusable by virtue of data protection considerations. An alternative is https://www.sync.com/. You need a paid subscription to be able to have access to unlimited old versions of documents - an essential safeguard against malicious damage by staff or malware.

Also, bear in mind that principal authorities will often provide archival storage of documents free of charge.