MOD ALREADY TRANSFERRING WW2 SERVICE FILES TO UK NATIONAL ARCHIVES 2021

The redactions in Delworths records was depressing to see.

 

Afternoon all,

Ancestry have now started to upload the first tranche of digital WW2 records.

1.7m Second World War records to go online | Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

 

I picked up an unexpected card for one of my maternal uncles, who served with the City of London Home Guard (Defence Medal), however, the worrying/disappointing news is:

 

Kew "medal" contracts details.

Registered office of supplier in both contracts:

Ancestry Ireland Unlimited Company
52–55 Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
Dublin D02 NA07
Ireland

AIR 83 Records of the Royal Flying Corps and successors, Gallantry Award Medal Index Cards, Licensing, Digitisation and Publishing - Contracts Finder

"The National Archives (TNA) is seeking to select a partner to license, digitise and publish online, AIR 83 Records of the Royal Flying Corps and successors, Gallantry Award Medal Index Cards, 1914-1945. The contract award would include a commercial licence to publish online digital images and associated metadata, and a requirement to undertake all the necessary activities to make that possible, including conservation, digital image capture, use of metadata to allow for meaningful searches of the records, and online publication. This is a series of approximately 12,000 index cards of the gallantry award medals (including rare Mentioned in Despatches) made to individuals during World War One. The cards cover the transitional period from the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) to the Royal Air Force (RAF). The cards contain information such as: Surname, Christian names, Rank, Corps, Regimental number, Mentioned in Despatch, Dates and give details of who approved the award for gallantry."

Licensing - Army Medal Index Cards - Contracts Finder

"The National Archives (TNA) is seeking expressions of interest for the digitisation, licensing and publication of the C.S. 20 Army Medal Index Cards. The project will be to digitise, transcribe and publish online the collection. The contract award will include a commercial licence to publish the images online, (and associated transcription data produced by the project) and to undertake all the required processes to complete this (including such activities as digital image capture and transcription of data, to allow for meaningful searches of the records' online publication), for which TNA will expect a commercial return."

 

News just in my internal reveiw is complete,


The National Archives is in receipt of your complaint dated 31/05/2024 in relation to your request for access to closed information within the above files. Your email has been taken to be a request for an internal review of the handling of your case: CAS-145008-C4D2G2

To clarify at the outset, this internal review will investigate only the handling of your request up to the date of your request for an internal review, as your request is still ongoing at this time. Once a final decision has been reached for this request, you will have the right to ask for a further internal review if you are dissatisfied with those final decisions.

The purpose of an internal review is to consider whether the requirements of the Act have been fulfilled. The scope of the review is defined by Part VI of the Code of Practice under s45 of the Act.

The National Archives has now concluded this review.

Received on 18/09/2023, your original request was identified as a request for access to closed information. Under section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 you have two rights of access:

(a) to be informed […] by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request, and
(b) if that is the case, to have that information communicated to [you]

In meeting this obligation, an authority must inform the requester of any decision (section 17 refusal notice) within the timeframes set out in section 10 (time limits) of the Act. In relation to the time The National Archives is given for compliance, section 10(4) of the Freedom of Information Act specifies that The National Archives be granted additional time to process requests for access to closed information held within the archives, as explained at the following link:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3364/regulation/4/made.

You have not received your requested information yet. As your original request is not yet completed, so our response cannot be considered ‘timely’, and I apologise for any inconvenience caused by the delay in providing you with a final response to your request.

Due to the large number of requests that this team is currently processing, I apologise that it has not been possible to meet this deadline for you.


Advice and Assistance

“I was informed that it would take 6 months to receive it
I am now informed it will take 9 months and as I will soon be at month 10
Of waiting I should have received it by now. Or is the policy just to add 3 months to the waiting time every time I reach the limit?”

As a department which works under FOI legislation, we always hope to provide information and responses to our requesters within 20 to 30 working days. However, due to the sheer number of requests we have received, I regret that it was not possible to meet this deadline for you. Please be assured that once a case has been logged and you have been given an SPR or CAS number, it means that your case is in the system and will not be forgotten.

To give some context to these delays, we believe it would be beneficial to provide some insight into the history of this project. In February 2021, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) began to transfer selected collections of its records over to The National Archives. This transfer is expected to take several years and we work closely with staff at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to ensure that requesters are given the correct contact details for where their record is. The MoD (and by extension the Army Personnel Centre) is, however, an entirely separate organisation to The National Archives, which means that once your request is received by us, the timeline begins again.

The transfer of these approx. ten million service personnel records is a complicated and lengthy project in which your requested record is involved. We rely on several different departments and, as this is a new project, our processes are still being refined. Once the records in this collection are transferred to The National Archives, they become subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. For further illustration of this process, underneath this paragraph we have included a representation of the lifecycle of an FOI request, when it is submitted to the MOD Access service Team (MOD AST). On top of the usual steps which every organisation beholden to the FOI Act must take, we are also obliged to honour section 66. This means that before confirming with a requester that they can have their requested information and whether it will be available to them in full or not, we must consult the MOD. Unfortunately, they too are under pressure and subject to delays which means that some requests cannot be resolved as quickly as we would hope.




We deal with all requests as they are received into our queue. We have a triage function which organises our requests and responds to requesters in date order. Of course, the complexities of FOI legislation and the potential exemptions contained in the service personnel files of differing sizes, means we have developed processes which allow us to address both the oldest requests and incoming requests. With over 17,000 active cases, we are working extremely hard to clear our case backlog and to return to timely responses to FOI requests. You can read more about the challenge of providing access to this unique collection, and what we are doing to address the situation, at:
FOI action plan - Freedom of Information (nationalarchives.gov.uk)

I am sorry that you have experienced delays in relation to your request, but I hope that the above information has helped to explain the reasons behind this. Furthermore, I hope you understand that your request is being processed and will be resolved once all necessary steps have taken place.

Outcome of the review

I should like to take this opportunity to inform you that The National Archives takes its Freedom of Information responsibilities very seriously. Each information request is handled and investigated on a case-by-case basis. In this case, and indeed in all cases we study, we apply objective reasoning to research and response.

Therefore, upon investigation during this internal review process of the handling of your request, please accept our apologies for the ongoing delays to your FOI request.

Should you wish to contact the Information Commissioner to investigate any aspect of your appeal please do so using the following contact details:

Information Commissioners Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

Access Service Manager
Access Service Team (MOD Service Personnel)
Information Rights
The National Archives

What a Load of old Cods!

Regards
Tim

 

And no named contact for you at TNA either Tim? Just the "Access Service Manager" (unknown!). That's not good service in my book.

Kind regards, keep plugging away, always,

Jim.

 

Poor Service all round and getting worse
soon to be starting month 14 and dont see me getting the ROS this side of christmas
Regards


Tim

 

This makes little sense. It looks like a 'category error'.

The outcome of the review is 'please accept our apologies for the ongoing delays'??

That's not an outcome, it's a call for patience.

It's akin to the conclusion of an essay being 'I'd like to apologise for not writing this essay'.

The judgment of a court is 'We find you guilty as charged', not 'Go to jail.'

 

In Other words Fek off and stop bothering us!
i note the active cases are now up from 12,000 to 17,000

Tim

 

I have a new Chindit family enquiry from the Remembrance period and I have found that his records are part of the WO422 series at TNA. The information states they are closed until January 2034. Is there any way they can access these before then? It suggests this might be possible on the form.

 

Hi,

The NOK needs to complete the online application form - via the box shown on the right of your screenshot - making sure to attach a copy death certificate. The file will then be assessed under the FOI Act and a decision will be made about what material - if any - can be released from the file. Currently taking National Archives up to a year to provide a copy file. Family will have to pay for the copy once it is ready for release.

Steve

 

Thanks Steve....at least that's something for them to be getting on with. This is the first of what will be many family enquiries I'll receive post Remembrance weekend.

 

Some information here regarding the waiting time to receive our ROS requests
if this is true and up to date im not at all suprised it takes so long


Quote. Currently 30 people are working to digitise this vast collection. As some of the material is subject to closure periods that have not yet elapsed, the team are working in a closed space, in which they are not allowed to bring mobile phones etc. The digitisation process is meticulously being undertaken by the team, with conservationists on hand to help when required.

full article here MOD military records now available online via Ancestry - Family Tree

£30,000 on brass paperclips !

regards

Tim

 

£30,000 on brass paperclips
Further insight to the scale of the project is given by the figure of £30,000, which was needed to fund the replacement of sub-optimal existing paperclips currently within these military records. (Below, one of the medal index cards from WW2 with one of the many new brass paperclips!). Regards keep on waiting Always Tim

 

Interesting recent FOI request which can be viewed on the "What Do They Know" website. The request was from someone whose name often appears in the old minutes of the User Forum ( long since defunct ) and the User Advisory Group at Kew.

The request was repeated in the reply from the MoD dated 20th November 2024.

"Thank you for your email of 10 October 2024 requesting the following information:

> Please publish a list of soldiers born before 1924 whose records the MoD currently holds or held prior to the start of the recent transfer of "ww2" service records to TNA.

> It seems likely that such a list has been compiled or is a subset of a list using a later date of birth.

> For many people the fact that the record of a particular relative exists, regardless of whether it is yet easily available will be much appreciated news.

> I think a similar exercise was performed by the MoD based around the date 1901 many years ago.

> The list should contain: Date of Birth, Full name, plus at least one Service Number <

Answer from the MoD:

"I am treating your correspondence as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

The requested information is attached and comprises 10 CSV documents in electronic form entitled ‘A – B’, ‘C’, ‘D – E’, ‘F – G’, ‘H’, ‘I – L’, ‘M’, ‘N – P’, ‘Q – S’ and ‘T – Z’.

However under Section 40(2) of the FOIA (personal data as defined in the Data Protection Act 2018) those service personnel with a date of birth after 1 November 1908 have been excluded as the Ministry of Defence presumes a maximum lifespan of 116 years based on current UK demographics. "

These lists appear to be downloadable since there are copy attachments available.

For further details and further correspondence from the applicant see:

Graham Woolgar - Freedom of Information requests

 

So basically 'no'......

 

But yes, we have no 115 years' old people, or 114, or 113..

World’s oldest known man dies aged 112 in Merseyside

Estimates of the very old, including centenarians, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

 

UPDATE!

I applied for a Casualties service record on the 28/10/2023. I received them from TNA 03/12/2024.

Hope this helps other desperate people work out timings for their records!

 

Oh well, a partially successful win is better than nothing. I remember the 1901 list, he refers to, I have a copy somewhere. That 116 yr rule has always perplexed me, especially if we don't have anyone aged 114, let alone 116.

Finally, and this one confuses me even more...the report removed anyone with a birth date of 1 Nov 1908, or later, but TNA list service record details, including date of birth, for a 1922 birth......