File Retention Periods – Finance & Resources/Finance
This page was last updated on 26th August 2022Forward
The main aim of this document is to list VCA Finance Section Information Assets and suggest suitable file retention periods for associated content. Retention periods follow current Agency guidelines as set out in Annex 1. Additionally, we have considered the approach taken by the Central DfT to similar records where applicable and aligned our retention periods to match where it seems appropriate to do so.
List of Information Assets considered
Asset: Financial Records
About the Asset:
This asset includes all records pertaining to the finances and accounting practices of the Agency
A summary of the asset;
The Asset is comprised of any paper document, which would include the likes of T&S claims, supplier and customer statements, bank statements and payment advices.
Similar documents are also held electronically, as Excel, Word and pdf formats, on the Finance Section shared xx drive. This also includes working documents for month and year end and journals used for posting financial data to the accounts system.
For the purposes of recording and reporting transaction data is also held in Finance. Transactional data is held in three main databases:
- SUN Accounts – the primary accounting package used in VCA
- V1 PSA – a Professional Services Automation package used for time recording, expense claims and customer invoicing.
- iPOS – an eProcurement system used in tandem with SUN Accounts for creating and authorising purchasing requisitions and handling direct invoices from suppliers
Retention:
In respect of Financial Records we have adopted the following retention periods:
- Medium term (7 years).
A description of the data types that would fit into these categories are as follows:
Medium term – 7 years retention
This includes all financial records and data, as highlighted above, with the exception of contractual arrangements and any tendering process used in the formal procurement process for such contracts.
It would apply to all paper records, the majority of which are held offsite by a 3rd party storage company, currently Iron Mountain. Any new papers going into storage will be given a destruction date of 7 years. Iron Mountain will seek confirmation of the destruction instruction at that time.
Finance staffs are also carrying out annual checks to ensure that this policy is implemented. Any non- compliant boxes of papers will be identified, manually checked if necessary and ordered for destruction if appropriate.
Finance section is in the process of migrating their documents to the SharePoint ECM system where documents can be marked with a review date.
Documents on the xx drive are manually identified using search criteria and judgement used to delete or retain.
Reviewing and deleting files
The retention periods have been set based on the requirement of HRMC to have a record of all financial transactions available for up to 7 years.
Deletion of electronic files is the responsibility of the Office Manager(s) who will incorporate the task of removing non-compliant electronic files as part of their Year End clear-down process.
Records in the SUN Accounts database should be archived for transactions over 7 years old. This is carried out by the SUN Administrator using the archive utility. These consolidate transactions as a summary into an archive database; it then deletes the individual transaction lines. A new opening balance is created for each account code.
VCA is in an early stage of moving to the database archiving concept and is phasing this in across the various currency databases during the 2018/2019 financial year. There are no plans to carry out similar archiving in V1 PSA at this time, but the feasibility this will be looked at in the 2019/2020 FYr.
Asset: Contracts and Tendering
About the Asset:
This asset includes all records pertaining to the contracts let and tendering exercises of the Agency A summary of the asset;
The Asset is comprised of any paper document, which would include written tender submissions and supporting documents. These are held on-site for one year and then transferred to Iron Mountain for long term storage.
Similar documents are also held electronically, as Excel, Word and pdf formats, on the Finance Section shared H drive. This also includes working documents for month and year end and journals used for posting financial data to the accounts system.
Data is held in xxxxx
Retention:
In respect of Contract and Tendering Records we have adopted the following retention periods:
- Long term (12 years).
A description of the data types that would fit into these categories are as follows:
Long term – 12 years retention
This includes all Contractual arrangements and any tendering process used in the formal procurement process for such contracts.
It would apply to all paper records, the majority of which are held offsite by a 3rd part storage company, currently Iron Mountain. Any new papers going into storage will be given a destruction date of 12 years. Iron Mountain will seek confirmation of the destruction instruction at that time.
Finance staffs are also carrying out annual checks to ensure that this policy is implemented. Any non- compliant boxes of papers will be identified, manually checked if necessary and ordered for destruction if appropriate.
Finance section is in the process of migrating their documents to the SharePoint ECM system where documents can be marked with a review date.
Documents on the xx drive are manually identified using search criteria and judgement used to delete or retain.
Reviewing and deleting files
Deletion of electronic files is the responsibility of the Office Manager(s) who will incorporate the task of removing non-compliant electronic files as part of their Year End clear-down process. Confirmation with the contract manager will be sought.
Asset: Strategic Risk Register
About the Asset:
The Agency’s strategic risk register is an Excel Workbook containing the strategic risks for the Agency. It holds the following types of information:
- Risk Description
- Risk Owner
- Risk Scores
- Commentary on risk treatment
The register is updated on a monthly basis and a monthly version stored.
Monthly review request are sent to all risk owners by mail merge and these returned to the Risk manager for updating. These are stored as email records.
New risks are entered in a New Risk Request Word form for approval at Board level. These are retained by the Risk manager.
All of the documents are stored in the folder structure: xxxx
Closed risks are moved and kept in a separate file “Closed Risks”.
Retention:
In respect of risk register we have adopted the following retention periods:
Medium term – 7 years retention
There is no operational or legal requirement for keeping risk beyond this period.
- Copies of the risk register will be deleted and entries in the closed risks file removed when they pass this deadline.
Reviewing and deleting files
Removal, deletion of entries will be the responsibility of the Agency Risk Manager
The registers are stored in a Financial Year-Month folder structure. As part of the year end process the Risk Manager should:
- Delete folders and Contents where the age is greater than 7
- Open the closed risks file and filter on the “Closed Date” column for entries older than 7 years. Those rows should then be deleted.
Annex 1
How long records should be kept
The period during which the contents of an electronic folder or paper file need to be kept can vary from just one year to over thirty.
This is known as the retention period which is shown in the disposal agreement for your division. This should be long enough to meet legislative and business requirements.
Remember that records can be in any format. General guidance about retention periods
| Subject of record | Suggested retention period |
| resource management | 2 to 5 years unless needed for operational purposes |
| policy development and legal | 20 years, especially if of public interest: see ‘all 20-year-old records’ |
| routine casework | 5 years, longer if there is a business need |
| public inquiries | to go on completion for ‘accelerated opening‘ to the National Archives |
| contractual including tendering | minimum of 12 years |
| financial, including invoice payment | minimum of 7 years |
| technical records | retention for the life-time of asset: see ‘retention past 20 years’ |
| personnel | retention until employee’s 100th birthday or later if special case |
| health and environmental/property | retention for the minimum to cover any related personnel impact |
| All 20 year old records. (Usually primary policy records) | Changes introduced in 2013 by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act has changed the 30 year rule to 20 years so that records of ‘historical interest ‘ will be transferred to The National Archives (TNA) 20 years after they were created. There will however be a 10 year transition period ending in 2023. |
| Retention past 20 years | Permissible only if the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives gives approval to the Agency Records Manager to retain records for operational purposes for more than 20 years. The Agency Records Manager must be made aware of any such records in existence. |
| Special retentions, issues and questions. | Contact Agency Records Officer. |
Disposing of out-of-date records and files
Out-of-date records can get in the way of finding useful ones and users are encouraged to delete records that are no longer required either because they are of short-term interest or their usefulness has expired and they are not part of a decision-making process.
In making a decision to delete a record care must be taken to ensure that no records are destroyed or deleted that relate to an ongoing FOI or a DPA request, including those that have yet to complete the appeals process (if done knowingly, this would constitute a criminal offence). If you are in any doubt about this, contact the Information Rights Unit.
All the files/folders opened under a sub-theme should have the same retention period (although a different retention period can be assigned to individual files/folders if unavoidable).
In some instances the retention period can be applied at theme level, so all the sub-themes and the files/folders opened under each of them are all kept for the same length of time. If this is not possible, a retention period can be assigned at the sub-theme level so that all files/folders under that sub-theme are kept for the same length of time.
It is important that Records Management has an up to date record of all retention periods for both paper and electronic records. The retention period must be the same for a hybrid file so that an electronic file folder and its paper equivalent will both be destroyed at the same time.