In 2013 the UK government began its move towards releasing records when they are 20 years old, instead of 30. Government departments were required to transfer 2 years’ worth of their records to The National Archives (TNA) each year until 2022.

Until the merger of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID) into the FCDO, the 2 former departments used distinct ways of prioritising their review of standard departmental files. In both cases the approach was adapted to the size and nature of their standard file collections and agreed with the independent Advisory Council on National Records and Archives.

The FCO prioritised the preparation for release of high priority annual departmental files created between 1983 and 2002. These high priority files are chiefly records created by the main geographical departments of the former FCO, although the historical significance of events reported in the files also comes into play in our prioritisation. Due to the volume of annual departmental files and the resources required for our non-standard files release programme, the FCO had to postpone the review of lower priority annual departmental files. The list of high priority files was considered again in 2025 to ensure those files of the highest public interest would be reviewed first.

By the end of March 2029 we expect to have reviewed all our FCO high-priority classes dating from between 1996 and 2002. We arewill currentlythen planningstart the review and preparation for transfer programmeof thatlower willpriority FCO files takecreated placeover fromthe April1983 2029.to 2002 period, in addition to high priority files created after 2002. In DFID’s case, owing to smaller volumes involved, all files have been reviewed over a designated 3-year time period, most recently DFID departmental files created between 1995 and 1997.

Timetable for preparing annual departmental files for release

This timetable shows the:

• order in which the FCDO is preparing 19961995 and later files for release
• year when we expect the files to be ready for physical transfer from the FCDO’s archive to TNA

For forthcoming releases, the timetable does not show the date when the files will be available for public release at TNA. Following physical transfer, TNA needs more time to prepare the files for release.

Files that TNA is currently preparing are shown as ‘Transferred to TNA’. All high priority annual departmental files before 19961995 have been transferred to TNA.