Retaining correspondence from a supervisory authority

Question

Hi

Does a parish council have any audit or legal responsibility to retain correspondence between them and a supervisory authority, i.e. correspondence relating to contentious issues and decision notices arising from investigations etc?

Any advice would be most appreciated.

Thank you

Sam

Answer 1

Does your council have a 'document retention policy' in place?

NALC have some guidelines on how long documents have to be kept. NALC Legal Topic Note 40 the last time I looked.

Some examples are 

• Negligence (and other ‘Torts’)    6 years
• Defamation   1 year
• Contract  6 years
• Leases 12 years
• Sums recoverable by statute 6 years
• Personal Injury   3 years
• To Recover Land 12 years
• Rent   6 years
• Breach of Trust   None

Depends on the category - do a search for the LTN and read the specifics.

Answer 2

Not sure what you mean by a supervisory authority, but the Information Commissioner could be classed as one. I don't think there is an absolute requirement need to retain any of the docs, but it would be good practice for a  PC to retain any correspondence it feels might need to be produced at a future date as evidence to settle  dispute or to justify how it acted or made a decision.    Storage need not be an issue if a competent Clerk can set up a decent Electronic document management system.

Comments

Many thanks Graeme_r.