3.1 Written material

All casework documents, emails and other written material should be stored on ECHO. (See Hard copy material where this is not possible.) Recorded telephone calls retrieved from the telephony system should also be stored on ECHO. Some must be stored in the DO NOT DISCLOSE folder – see our call recording protocol on the intranet for details. No complaint material - primary records or copies - should be kept in personal (H:) drives, the shared K: drive (except in circumstances set out in 4.2, or where a document is temporarily stored on the K: drive for redaction but once completed, it must be deleted), in Outlook, or on USB sticks or other movable media.

ECHO documents, shall be kept for 12 months from the last substantive1 action, but see the Exceptions to the 12-month retention policy. This is to provide for the possibility of legal proceedings (judicial review or action under the Human Rights Act) or to the court for damages. A ‘substantive’ action will be a final decision, including one from a PDR, or a satisfied date for a report. These are the items that trigger automatic file management at 12 months. An FOI or DPA request is not a substantive action and will only extend the retention period for a maximum of four months done manually through the ‘other contact’ screen and requiring a follow-up self-set task to close the screen again. Compliments and thank you letters are ‘non-substantive’, as are letters from persistent complainants who continue to write without offering any new information, especially if a final letter has been sent to them saying we will no longer reply.

(Refer to the ECHO manual for instructions on what to do when correspondence is received on cases that have already had their documents deleted after 12 months.)

3.2 Premature complaint decisions

All premature decision letters and statements should be kept in the ECHO decision folder and deleted after five years, at the same time as the other written material on the case. This is regardless of whether the premature decision was made at Intake or Assessment.

3.3 Decision statements

The following documents (which should be the only information in the ‘Decision and PDR decision’ folder on ECHO) will be retained with the rest of the ECHO record for five years:

• Intake and Assessment “premature” letters
• Final decision covering letters to BinJ, PA and any REP
• Final decision letters which may not have a statement such as “not a valid complaint” decisions and withdrawn complaints
• A final decision statement where the case was marked “Not for Publication”
• A final decision statement (and the covering letters) that have been overturned at Review stage
• Any “no further contact” letters
• Any post-decision review (PDR) decision sent by a reviewer
• Any PAP or JR response; our formal response; Counsel’s advice, Court Orders
• Published Report, Final and Further Report and Statement of Non-Compliance and Adverse Findings Notice (part 3A cases) (these are uploaded to the website by P&C using a different process)
• Evidence of compliance with service improvement recommendations, as determined by an Assistant Ombudsman.

Published final decision statements will be kept in the ‘Publication’ folder on ECHO.

After five years the electronic version of the final decision statement, any associated covering letters (and those documents above stored in the decision folder on ECHO) should be deleted.

3.4 Investigation public reports

Investigation public reports (both published and confidential reports) including Further Reports and Statements of Non-Compliance will be kept on ECHO for 5 years after the decision date, or after the date of a further report, if there is one. Statements of conclusions with recommendations (part 3A complaints) are kept on ECHO for 5 years, along with any subsequent Adverse Findings Notices. On ECHO they are kept in the ‘Decision and PDR decision’ folder. Where a document is published on our website, it will be retained there for 10 years, except for Statements of conclusions with recommendations (part3A complaints) which are treated the same as other decision statements and published online for 5 years.

3.5 ECHO screen data

The person affected’s and any representatives’ personal details (e.g. name and address and other contact details) held on ECHO should be anonymised after five years (at the same time as the statement of reasons is deleted). ‘Memo’ fields on various screens that allow entry of free text are also cleared at this point. This affects various screens including remedy, PDR and ‘other contact’ screens. The rest of the complaint record on ECHO (excluding all documentation) will be retained for 10 years so that the data is still available for statistical analysis purposes.

The records are anonymised so LGSCO complies with the data protection principles (see above) that personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date, and shall not be kept longer than is necessary for the purposes for which they are processed.

3.6 Equality and diversity data

This data is collected voluntarily when a complainant first registers a complaint with us. It is not stored on ECHO as part of the case file. Its retention period is set out in the Policy and Communications retention schedule on the intranet.

3.7 LGSCO Alerts

It is possible to have a record of a person who is potentially violent or disruptive without a complaint having been made. These alerts should be reviewed on an annual basis. We should only maintain an alert without a complaint having been made for a limited time, where contact is expected. (See Managing challenging complainant behaviour for more details.)