7,000 government documents nearly illegally destroyed

Friday 07 June 2019

Jersey Archive helped to narrowly avoid the destruction of 7,000 documents by a government department last summer, it has emerged.

The revelation comes after this week's news that thousands of documents of "historic value" had been destroyed by the Environment Department in what was described as the “most serious incident” in the 16 years since the introduction of the Public Records Law.

The “key documents” included over 4,000 listed buildings files dating from the late 1980s and the 1990s, as well as material from a 1970s Sites of Special Interest (SSI) survey, reports, correspondence and photographs.

Now it's emerged that, not long after that incident, the government came very close to breaking the Public Records Law again.

The department in question – which has not been identified, but is not the Environment Department – had made digital copies of the documents but was about to get rid of the originals, despite this being in breach of the law, when the Archive intervened to prevent this from going ahead.

Pictured: The “key documents” had been identified as “relevant for archiving” in 2009.

Archive Director Linda Romeril told Express that the originals had now fortunately been safely stored by the Archive, and said that, as a result of the incidents, all government departments had to be reminded of their obligations as a public authority - in particular that scanning documents does not mean "you can get rid of the originals."

Providing further information on the Environment Department's blunder, Mrs Romeril explained that, as soon as she found out, the Records Advisory Panel contacted the Government's CEO, Charlie Parker, to let him know what had happened.

Mrs Romeril also contacted all Records management officers across Government departments to remind them to check their schedules before destroying anything. 

“We’ve done as much as we can to contact who was involved. We have some material waiting to arrive at the Archive once the strong room is finished next year. We’ve followed up with the departments to remind them there is material due to come to the Archive. We have a pretty good handle on the material.”

Pictured: Mrs Romeril and her team narrowly avoided the destruction of 7,000 documents.

The lost historic building documents had been first seen by the Archive in July 2009 and had been identified as “relevant for archiving” then.

They also appeared on schedules - lists of all the records created by a Department, how long they should be kept and whether they should be sent to the Archive or disposed of safely after that time – signed by the Department in 2014/2015.

Jeremy Harris, Chairperson of the Records Advisory Panel – which reviews and advises Jersey Heritage and Government departments on their roles with respect to public records - said the Panel had been “dismayed” to hear about “this inadvertent destruction of records”, describing it as “the most serious incident involving the loss of public records since the Public Records Law came into force in 2003.”

It is unclear when the destruction actually happened, but Director of Archives and Collections, Linda Romeril became aware of it in February 2018.

Pictured: The Archive strong room should be completed next year.

The Government of Jersey has not confirmed which department was behind the near-destruction of 7,000 documents failed. It also failed to respond to a question by Express over who authorised the destruction of the Environment Department's documents, and whether they had faced any repercussions for their actions.

However, a spokesperson defended the latter major misstep, saying "no information was lost as a result of this incident, but had rather been stored rather been stored in digital format." According to the spokesperson, the decision to digitise the files saved "space and money."

"Lever-arch files containing a number of planning applications, all submitted in the 1980s and 1990s, were determined to be of poor quality: the information was of insignificant value, and the files and papers in them were of poor standard.

"Officers decided that it would be sensible to scan the documents to keep the information, and then destroy the physical paperwork," they added.