Purpose

When the Independent Inquiry into
Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) was first launched in 2015, local
authorities were directed not to dispose of records that could fall
within its Terms of Reference. The Chair at the time acknowledged
the breadth of this statement and as a result a wide range of
records had to be retained while the Inquiry was on-going. The
Inquiry published its final report on 20 October 2022. The
Government responded to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual
Abuse in May 2023.
The moratorium on holding records has now been lifted but due to
the scope and length of the Inquiry over 130k digital and paper
records are now overdue for disposal. Discussions have taken place
with colleagues in children's social care, information governance,
information and records management and legal service around
non social care, social care and
personnel records on hold. It has previously been agreed that non
social care records could be disposed off in line with retention.
The Government in its response to the Inquiry acknowledged that
retentions for records of child sexual abuse vary. The Information
and Records Management Society (IRMS), advises that a pupil file
should be kept until the child had reached the age of 25 (seven
years after leave school age) in England, Scotland and Wales. The
NHS Records Management Code of Practice outlines a minimum
retention of 30 years for sexual assault records, and 25 years for
children’s records. In Lancashire a Looked after child
records is retained for 75 years from date of birth however
retentions on other record series do vary.
Extracting data from LCS shows there are almost 27,000 records
which have reached the end of their retention which are still on
the IICSA legal hold.
For those records which have reached the end of their retention,
whilst there is a risk that there may be allegations of abuse
contained within the records, it is recommended we should apply the
same rule as non-social care records and assume that the majority of workers acted in good faith and
allegations are appropriately recorded and the correct retention
applied. In principle there is as much a risk in keeping records
beyond their legal retention "just in case" as we are of taking a
pragmatic approach to managing and disposing of the records in
accordance with our retention policy which is based on legislation
and guidance.

Content

Johanna Jones, Information and Records
Manager, on behalf of Heloise MacAndrew, Director of Law and
Governance, took the decision as set out in the report.