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Freedom of Information: Policy Statement

1. Introduction

Churchill Archives Centre is keen to promote and facilitate access to information and welcomes enquiries from anyone interested in the Centre and its collections. There is a great deal of information about the Archives Centre available on our website and we are widening access to our catalogues and finding aids by publishing them online (see the Collections area of our website for further details of online finding aids). The Archives Centre is open to the members of the public (who are issued with a reader's ticket on production of two forms of identification) and is committed to equality of access.

Churchill College, including the Archives Centre, is covered by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act which comes into force in January 2005. The websites of the Information Commissioner and the National Archives include further information about FOI and you can find Churchill College's publication scheme here.

This policy statement relates specifically to Churchill Archives Centre and has been drawn up using the advice of the staff of the National Archives given at various professional training events. It is not a guide to FOI.

2. Asking for information and making an FOI request

We welcome enquiries about our collections and the Centre itself. Under the terms of the FOI Act, you are able to make an FOI request for information by putting your enquiry in writing to the Centre (by e-mail, letter or fax), giving details of your name, postal address and contact information and describing the information you are seeking. You are also able to specify the format in which you would prefer the information to be supplied. We have 20 working days to respond to your request (although we aim to do so as quickly as possible). There may be charges associated with answering your request (for example in providing photocopies) and we will advise you of these. Please note that there are currently no charges for visiting the Archives Centre and taking digital photographs of material.

3. Our contact details

Churchill Archives Centre
Churchill College
Cambridge
CB3 0DS
United Kingdom
Telephone: (01223) 336087
Fax: (01223) 336135
E-mail: archives@chu.cam.ac.uk


4. Finding aids

Catalogued or box-listed archives are considered to be 'published' and are mostly available to researchers. Increasing numbers of our catalogues are available free of charge on the Internet and we are also able to supply photocopies of hard copy catalogues (we do make a charge for providing photocopies). Information about visiting the Archives Centre to look at the material described in our catalogues is available in the visiting us section of our website. Information about catalogues and finding aids is available here.

5. Closures within collections

We are keen that material in our care is open and accessible as far as possible. However, within some of our collections, some files or documents are closed and are not available for consultation. The reasons for these closures generally fall into four categories:

5.1. Closed on instructions from or in consultation with the Cabinet Office
Churchill Archives Centre holds many papers of individuals who played significant roles in public affairs and represented the government at high levels. The information contained in our collections overlaps with the information contained in the government's own records held at the National Archives. The Cabinet Office, and occasionally other external organisations, review our collections to ensure that information that is available at the National Archives is available here and that information that is not available at the National Archives is not available here either. The reasons for this type of closure are reflected in the exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act and may include: national security matters, defence and international relations, internal relations, formulation of government policy and the conduct of public affairs, honours and contact with the Royal Family.

5.2. Closed on data protection grounds due to the presence of sensitive personal information about named individuals who are (or may be) still alive
Further information about the Data Protection Act 1998 can be found on the websites of the Information Commissioner and the National Archives. The Data Protection Act classifies the following types of information about an individual as sensitive: As many of our collections were catalogued before the Data Protection Act came into force, it is possible that sensitive personal information about potentially living individuals is not always closed in our collections. Readers are reminded that the application form for a reader's ticket includes the following undertaking:

I undertake to indemnify Churchill College against all claims and actions on the part of other persons arising out of the inclusion by me in any manuscript or the disclosure or publication in any other way of any matter taken from any archive in the Archives Centre which may be held to constitute a libel upon any person, or be an infringement of copyright or data protection legislation, or be a breach of confidence.

5.3. Closed according to donor's wishes
Churchill Archives Centre exists to preserve and make available the raw material of our recent past. We are actively collecting and seeking to collect new material. You can find details of our collecting policy here. We are always keen to try and persuade donors to agree that collections should be open and accessible. However, owners sometimes feel that material in their collections has ongoing sensitivity and that they cannot agree to public access. Churchill Archives Centre also has a responsibility to posterity and, in order to secure the preservation of a collection which falls within its collecting policy, will agree to reasonable conditions that the donor feels are necessary. Information that remains closed on donor's wishes has been supplied to the Archives Centre in confidence and is therefore exempt from the provisions of the FOI Act. Information in collections which are not owned by Churchill College (i.e. collections deposited on loan) may not be covered by FOI.

5.4. Uncatalogued material
Churchill Archives Centre is not able to provide access to entirely uncatalogued or unsorted collections. The main reasons for this are to ensure the security of the material; to package or repair material to make it physically safe to handle; and to preserve the original order of material. The Centre currently has an active cataloguing programme which enables us to tackle our cataloguing backlog.

5.5. Asking about closures in our collections
We are keen to respond as positively as possible to enquiries and FOI requests and would encourage you to seek further details about information which is closed for the reasons outlined above. Let us know what you need and we will try to help. We may be able to do the following:

5.5.1. Refer material that has been closed on instructions of the Cabinet Office (or in consultation with the Cabinet Office) to the Cabinet Office to check that it should still remain closed. In such cases we would reply to you within 20 days although we may have to wait longer for a response from the Cabinet Office.

5.5.2. Review material closed on data protection grounds and, under certain circumstances, we may allow access.

5.5.3. Double-check the donor's wishes - this may give us a valuable opportunity to revisit the terms under which a collection was given to the Centre and check that sensitivities identified at the time of deposit are still an ongoing concern.

5.5.4. Give you information about our cataloguing programme so that you know which collections we are currently cataloguing and those we hope to catalogue in the medium term. Our cataloguing programme is flexible and we would hope to prioritise the cataloguing of collections for which there is demand, as far as our resources allow. As deposited collections (i.e. those on loan) may not be covered by FOI, we may prioritise work on those collections we own.

5.5.5 Under certain circumstances Archives Centre staff may be able to check records on behalf of researchers, including boxes in closed and uncatalogued collections, and documents where their inherent fragility prohibits access on conservation grounds, and to provide a summary of the information contained in the records. The Archives Centre may have to make a charge to cover the cost of such research, and would always advise the researcher of such charges before they were incurred.

6. Appeals and complaints

The Information Commissioner's website contains details of how you can appeal against a refusal to provide information. Before you appeal to the Information Commissioner, please use our internal complaints procedure by contacting the

Freedom of Information Officer
Churchill College
Storey's Way
Cambridge
CB3 0DS
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0) 1223 336000
E-mail: Information@chu.cam.ac.uk



Natalie Adams, Archivist/Information Services Manager 15 December 2004.