The BPMA operates the Royal Mail Group Records Centre. The Records Centre is here to advise and support Royal Mail Group in the management of its records. This page explains some of the principles of records management.

What is a 'record'?

A record is recorded information in any form (e.g. paper or electronic) created or received by the business, which is retained to support business functions and to provide evidence of business activity.

Records management is therefore the management of this recorded information. Good records management ensures the efficient and effective running of operations and secures the ‘corporate memory’ of Royal Mail Group.

How do you manage records?

Managing records means your working life gets easier, as information is reliable and quicker to find. It provides evidence of people's rights and entitlements, and shows what the business did and why it did it.

To manage records keep in mind these five things:

1. The record is present.
   This simply means physically retaining the records of important activity. It is an obvious but essential first step.
2. The record can be accessed.
   This means that information can actually be located and consulted again when needed.
3. The record can be interpreted.
   Keeping records is pointless if people can't make sense of them weeks, months or years later. Managing a record requires context i.e. who created it, when, why, as part of what business process?
4. The record can be trusted.
   This is very much linked to providing context. The record needs to be kept in such a way that it can be checked and verified for accuracy at a later date.
5. The record can be maintained through time.
   This is particularly important with electronic records, as file formats can change over time. The qualities of accessibility, interpretability and trustworthiness must be maintained for a record to remain useful.

Why is this important?

Think of information as a corporate asset; something the business needs to have in order to operate; like people, money, buildings or computers.

Royal Mail Group's records are important sources of administrative, evidential and historical information. You need to know what you have done in the past (yesterday or 5 years ago) to inform what you do in the present or future.

Records are vital to the business because of public accountability and legal obligations. Good records management means that we can find these records again when we need them. It is a bit of effort today to save headaches tomorrow.

Here's some of the legislation that affects records management, which gives you an idea of how important this is:

• Civil Evidence Act 1995
• Companies Acts 1985 and 1989
• Computer Misuse Act 1990
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
• Data Protection Act 1998
• Disability Discrimination Act 1995
• Electronic Communications Act 2000
• Financial Services Act 1986
• Freedom of Information Act 2000
• Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
• Limitation Act 1980
• Race Relations Act 1976
• Regulation of Investigative Powers Act 2000
• Sex Discrimination Acts 1975 and 1986
• Value Added Tax Act 1994

Records Management Contacts

We can help you with off-site storage for your records. To find out more about the off-site storage facilities, call the Records Centre on 020 7239 2566, or email records.centre@postalheritage.org.uk.

You can also access the Box Offsite storage guidelines and the Registered File service guidelines.

Have you got an archive on your hands?

Royal Mail, Post Office and Parcelforce are the modern parts of a business that is nearly four hundred years old, with premises all over the UK.

Whilst it's not very likely that you will uncover a piece of 17th century parchment in a store cupboard (!), we do know that sometimes Royal Mail Group people find documents that are 30, 40 or even 50 years old, in an ancient filing cabinet or desk.

So, what do you do if you find an old dusty book that doesn't fit in with your modern records management? Here's our quick guide:

1. Ask your colleagues about it. They may know where it came from, or what it was for. That kind of information can be really useful when working out if something is of long-term historical value.
2. Check our online catalogue to see if there are similar types of records already in The Royal Mail Archive. If there are, note down the POST class reference number (the catalogue contains many thousands of records, but please remember it is not yet complete).
3. Contact the BPMA on 020 7239 2570 to let us know what you have got. The more information you can give us about the item, the easier we can assess whether we can take it off your hands.

This massive business has generated countless tonnes of documents, and we cannot keep every one. One of the jobs of an archivist is to work out what is worth keeping. We are more likely to keep a representative sample of records.