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Funding totalling £660,000 has been distributed to 43 places of deposit across England and Wales under the Government’s New Burdens programme.

The funding is designed to help places of deposit process an increased number of public record transfers between 2015 and 2024 as certain public sector organisations transition from a 30 to a 20-year-rule.

In each year of these years, £660,000 is available from HM Treasury for local authority places of deposit. A further £50,000 annually has also been allocated for coroners to cover the cost of preparing more material for transfer.

To receive New Burdens funding, archive services must first declare the public record transfers that they have received in their annual accessions report. Record transfers that are eligible for funding include those from magistrates’ courts, prisons, coroners’ courts, NHS bodies and some arms-length bodies.

The total number of eligible records transferred to all services in the previous year are then totalled and the funds are allocated between places of deposit based on the proportion of these records that they each received.

A particular benefit of this funding is that archive services can spend this funding flexibly to develop their general capacity to manage records, both public and non-public. In previous years, places of deposit have used the funding to create additional storage, such as new shelving or strong-rooms. The funding has also enabled archive services to employ additional archivists, upgrade their catalogues or pay for conservation materials.

Some services have even leveraged additional funding to undertake large-scale development projects such as a new building or digital preservation system, essential if they are to be able to handle the new types of public records now being created.

You can find more details of the New Burdens scheme, including the eligibility criteria and how the funds can be used, on our website or by emailing us at asd@nationalarchives.gov.uk.