Study of Records Lifecycle RRS Appendix B
Higher Education Institutions:
Record Retention Schedule (RRS)
Appendix B: Records which may be routinely destroyed
As a rule, the following types of records have no significant operational, informational or evidential value. They can therefore be destroyed as soon as they have served their primary purpose.
Examples
- Announcements and notices of meetings and other events, and notifications of acceptance or apologies
- Requests for stock information such as maps and travel directions, brochures etc.
- Requests for, and confirmations of, reservations for internal services (e.g. meeting rooms, car parking spaces, pool cars) where no internal charges are made
- Requests for, and confirmations of, reservations with third parties (e.g. travel, hotel accommodation, restaurants) when invoices have been received
- Transmission documents: letters, FAX cover sheets, e-mail messages, routing slips, compliments slips and similar items which accompany documents but do not add any value to them
- Message slips
- Superseded address lists, distribution lists etc.
- Duplicate documents such as:
- ‘CC’ and ‘FYI’ copies
- Unaltered drafts
- ‘Snapshot’ printouts or extracts from databases
- ‘Day Files’ (chronological copies of correspondence)
- Personal diaries, address books etc.
- Working papers, where the results have been written into an official document and which are not required to support it
- Stocks of in-house publications which are obsolete, superseded or otherwise useless e.g. magazines, marketing materials, prospectuses, catalogues, manuals, directories, forms, and other material produced for wide distribution
- Published or reference materials received from other parts of the institution or from vendors or other external organisations which require no action and are not needed for ‘record’ purposes, e.g. trade magazines, vendor catalogues, flyers, newsletters
