This year has been a busy one for Records Management (RM). Back in May we provided our usual support to the Highland Council at the General Election count in Dingwall. It is the job of RM to take custody of all the election records once the count has been completed. This includes the marked registers which are used at the polling stations to record who has voted, as well as the actual ballot papers themselves and other documents. This service is also provided for by-elections.
The Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011 was the first new piece of legislation relating to public records in Scotland for over 70 years. One of the main impacts of the Act was that all public bodies had to have a records management plan which detailed their arrangements for dealing with their public records. An authority’s Plan has to be submitted to the Keeper of the Records of Scotland in Edinburgh for approval. Highland Council’s Plan was submitted at the end of August 2015 and the Records Manager was heavily involved in its drafting and submission.
Back in March a serious flood in the Lochaber record store at Camaghael resulted in staff from RM having to go down to Fort William. Fortunately very few of the records were damaged as the water came from below and most of the records were on shelving. However, part of the room had to be dried out and this involved deploying dehumidifiers, moving some of the records to an external site and the rest to another part of the room. The opportunity was also taken to have a clear out of records which had reached the end of their retention period.
More recently we have been involved in preparations for the move of the Council’s Inverness Service Point office to the Town House. The Council has been based in these offices for some years and the large accumulation of records in the basement needs to be dealt with before the building is vacated in February. This is a common type of task for the RM team to be involved in across the Highlands.
The Records Management “Fab Four”
Trevor Nicol, Records Manager
