Policy Statement
The Council will ensure that:
- It does not keep information for longer than is necessary.
- It will retain the minimum amount of information required in order to carry out its statutory duties.
- Personal data is securely disposed of when no longer needed.
- Data will be disposed of in the most appropriate and agreed manner.
This will be achieved by staff ensuring:
- The retention of paper documents / hard copies are kept to a minimum.
- Wherever possible, paper documents (hard copies) will be scanned electronically with the paper (hard copy) disposed of in an appropriate manner.
- Unless specified otherwise in the Corporate Retention Policy, or any Service Retention Polices paper documents / hard copies of documentation will be disposed of as follows:
| Type of Data | Disposal Method |
| Contains confidential and commercially sensitive information | Shredded onsite |
| Contains personal data | Shredded onsite |
| Contains no confidential or personal data | Recycled |
| Public documents, not containing confidential and / or personal information | Recycled |
| When documents are being disposed of on someone else's behalf, clear guidance should be provided as to how the documents are being disposed of. In the absence of such guidance, documents should be shredded onsite. | Shredded onsite |
A register of destruction of records should be kept. Enough detail should he recorded to identify which records have been destroyed.
If documents are to be shredded off-site by a 3rd party organisation as data processors appropriate checks (by the data controller - the Council) must have taken place to ensure their suitability to handle the data and arrangements documented. At the end of the data destruction process, the 3rd party organisation will supply on request, a Certificate of Destruction.
Duplicated and superseded materials for instance, draft documents and minutes of meetings that have now been finalised can be destroyed without a retention period (and is deleted as 'normal course of business').