Help and advice for parishes and Diocesan staff
The Diocesan Archivist is happy to assist parishes and Diocesan staff with any record or archive related query.
Detailed archive and record keeping advice for Diocesan and parish staff can be found on the Diocesan Resource Centre: https://inside.rcaos.org.uk/
For help and advice on archives or records, for example with preservation, identifying historically valuable records, transferring records to the Diocesan Archive, assistance with research into the history of a parish, retention schedules, recordkeeping, disposal advice, GDPR etc please contact the Diocesan Archivist:
Jenny Delves (working days: Monday and Tuesday)
E: archives@rcaos.org.uk
T: 020 7928 5592
Record keeping and Retention Advice for Parishes
This document gives advice to parishes on how best to care for their records – both records that are in current use and records that have been kept as archives. It contains a retention schedule for parishes setting out how long documents should be kept for.
Findmypast for parishes
If your parish has not yet set up its free log-in to the Findmypast website, please contact the Diocesan Archivist for assistance.
Archive policies and documents
- Access Policy
- Personal Data Policy
- Acquisition Policy
- Data Protection, GDPR and parish archives
- Record keeping and retention advice for parishes
- Records Retention Schedule (full version)
- Records Retention Schedule (abridged version)
- Records Management Policy
- Archive User Agreement form
Catholic archive links
Catholic Archive Society: https://catholicarchivesociety.org/
Catholic Heritage (the website for the Networking Archives and Libraries in the Catholic Church project): https://www.catholic-heritage.net/