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Home Office retention and disposal standards

Outlines the Home Office standards for keeping and disposing of corporate information.

• From: Home Office
• Published: 23 June 2015
• Last updated: 12 July 2024 — See all updates

Documents

What to keep – corporate retention schedules

PDF, 247 KB, 12 pages

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Details

Outlines how long Home Office units keep corporate information held by the department.

The standards apply to all media of records, including (but not restricted to) paper, digital, audio and video tapes, films, DVDs and CD ROMs.

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Published 23 June 2015
Last updated 12 July 2024 + show all updates

1. 12 July 2024

   Guidance updated.

2. 9 July 2024

   Guidance updated.

3. 20 October 2023

   Updated details about the current moratoria.

4. 22 September 2022

   Removed the 2 entries relating to Internal and External Publications and ISBNs from section 2.5 as ISBNs are no longer issued as they are not a legal requirement.

5. 12 July 2022

   The standard retention period has changed from '0 to 5 years destroy' to '2 years destroy'. The last review date and next review date has also been updated.

6. 29 December 2021

   Updated to add 2 new record types: e-discovery and Nuix searches.

7. 10 August 2021

   Standard approaches updated.

8. 2 March 2021

   Under '2.2 Information requests', responses to routine subject access requests (SAR) changed from 5 years to 2 years.

9. 2 December 2020

   Added DPIA information.

10. 29 July 2019

    Updated details.

11. 19 June 2018

    Updated information.

12. 1 December 2017

    Guidance updated.

13. 20 November 2017

    Guidance updated.

14. 10 February 2017

    Row on 'contracts' added.

15. 22 June 2016

    Updated guidance published.

16. 18 May 2016

    Updated guidance published

17. 23 June 2015

    First published.