MOD ALREADY TRANSFERRING WW2 SERVICE FILES TO UK NATIONAL ARCHIVES 2021

17 pages, you've done well. Enjoy .

Lesley

 

I assume my complaint has been filed in the bin.

No further contact after three weeks.

We're now looking at 1 year, 5 months, 14 days since my initial request.

The estimate then was 10 to 12 months.

 

Yesterday I applied for another set of records and they've just turned up. Standard service, only 9 pages this time.

I don't know if this makes the process any quicker, but I am including the transfer reference number (obtained from the MoD).

Cheers.
John.

 

The transfer ref number seems to have an effect on triage to find a record not yet in catalogue.

There is bit of creative accounting going on however with TNA making more revenue from +115 years records not on Discovery than those on Discovery

Eg
Name: J C Bell . Service number: 7597821 . Date of birth: 22 February 1905 . | The National Archives

Record is Open - but in common with all in WO Army Records series it is not available for immediate use - needs
"This record requires preparation for production. It will take four working days to prepare."

This is the common procedure to review and redact possible living 3rd party.

If you order this Open, record from the Catalogue entry then the costs are
£9.92 - for a page check (assumed max 15 mins) then per page cost for each page it contains

Implicit is that no fee is charged for the document preparation.

Now if you use the transfer ref number to request a copy of a similar +115 year status record not on Discovery - your options are limited to Combined (Standard) or Combined (Full) - for a document open on transfer.

The longer records are not processed onto Discovery the greater the earnings from public request for copy. Mod reference lets TNA spend less time finding.

This is TNA definition of Combined (Standard)
The Combined (Standard) Service for MoD Service Personnel Records is a combination of the Search and Copying Service fees, which results in a lower overall fee and a single fees notice for payment. This fee relates to the new service designed to provide access to the specific records that are generally of most interest to the families of service personnel, such as details provided at the point of enlistment, records of service, and testimonials. Information that can be found in these subsets of records would often include when an individual signed up for a service, a summary of their movements and which units they served in, promotions where applicable, and when the individual left the service. As the Combined (Standard) Service is for a pre-defined subset of documents, the processing of the request is streamlined which results in efficiencies that create a lower total cost to the requester.

Search for non digital records is
Search – £38.95 per 15 mins
(2019: £24.35)

The Search fee is the cost associated with The National Archives confirming whether a record or requested information is held, identifying where the record/information is located and retrieving that record/information. As the cost of the Search fee is associated with the time taken to search, locate, retrieve and extract the requested information, it is non-refundable in the event that the record is not held by The National Archives (see refund policy below for more details). Please note the Search fee does not include the cost of copying the documents within the record.

So effectively the transfer ref should result in a reduction for the search part from £38.95 approx to £9.92


Ross

 

I was thinking, if I'm providing the reference number, should the standard fee be reduced by the search fee.....after all, there's no search required.

 

Doubt it will result in a refund as we agree to terms for order - but it will make some spin doctor burn midnight oil to come up with plausible reason especially if MP is looking for a quick sound bite eg Gov department profiteering on dead servicemen/women before May.

Ross

 

Just been on to Discovery to see service records for men from my father’s 1937 recruit squad are now indexed and available to order at National Archives.

For some reason my father’s record isn’t shown…..hopefully it’s being prepped for release……I ordered it 18+ months ago.

Steve

 

I have received the result of my internal review.

You'll like this.

As the internal review was submitted on 24th October 2025, it covers only the National Archive's handling of my case up until that date (roughly one year after my initial request on 5th October 2024).

I am informed that I was, at that date, at stage 2 of 6 step process.

Stage 1: Takes 2 working days.
Stage 2: Takes 10 to 15 months.

Stage two is that the MOD Access Service Team (MOD AST) receives my request (i.e. it reaches the front of the queue).

As of 24 October 2025, I was still within that 10 to 15 month window and they offer apologies for the fact that this cannot be considered 'timely'.

Since, however, the internal review has taken six months to conduct, the information it contains is now out of date: I have now been waiting one year, six months and 15 days, which places my case beyond their projected waiting period.

Do you think I can submit a request for an internal request with a date six months in advance, so that the information I receive in six months' time will be current?

This part is a bit of a mystery to me:

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.

One cannot operate a queue and a triage system simultaneously: with a queue, cases are addressed chronologically; with triage, cases are addressed according to severity/urgency. They speak here of 'our queue' in the singular, but if they are categorising cases by ease of resolution (simplicity/complexity), they must be operating more than one queue.

Is my logic at fault here?

Edit: madness--I've complained to the Information Commissioner's Office.

 

Much like others, I applied to TNA for my grandfather's full servcie records, and have been disapointed by the result. I already had some of his records that had been requested from the MoD several years ago, but was hoping to access more records that had not originally been released, particularly his medical records.

Low and behold, after exactly a month, my FOI request was processed - quicker than I was expecting - but of the 12 pages of records that they had (and I paid for), this was the bottom of the document...



Nice to know I'm not alone in this.

After trying to read myself up on FOI legislation, I have sent a request for an internal review. I'll add below in case it is of use to anyone, or in case others have feedback based on their knowledge of FOI or experiences dealing with TNA Internal Reviews that might help me in further discussions. Even if those might take a year or so before I even get to review!

Some of the arguments are stronger than others (bringing up next-of-kin is, I think, fairly futile), but I figure, like in court, you just need to make one of the charges stick!



Dear Sir/Madam,

I am requesting an internal review of the FOI Request CAS-324096-X5Y4C0, in relation to WO 423/276120: A DELVALLE (Service Number: 14562801).

Acting with consent and as proxy for the next of kin, Sarah Delvalle, I requested a Full Record Check of Alfred Delvalle's service records, and provided a death certificate for Alfred Devalle, who died in 2004.

Whilst I am pleased that the TNA MOD Access team dealt with the initial FOI promptly, of the 12 pages of records that were found, 7 of these were entirely redacted under Section 41 of the Freedom of Information Act.

I am challenging this decision on the following grounds:

1. Over-redaction - under Section 41 authorities must redact exempt material only. A whole sentence or paragraph should not be removed if only one or two words are non-disclosable, unless release would place the missing words in context and make their content or meaning clear. The redaction of 7 entire pages is a significant over-redaction of the documentation requested and goes beyond the requirements laid out in Section 41 and creates a presumption that the exemption has been applied as a blanket policy rather than through genuine page-by-page assessment, which is not a lawful approach. The redacted pages need to be properly reviewed, and only specifically exempt material should be redacted. In each case of a redaction being upheld, TNA should provide a specific explanation of what category of information is being withheld and why that category meets all three legal tests under Section 41, not just a blanket citation of the exemption, in accordance with Section 16 for TNA to assist and advise applicants.

2. Lack of quality of confidence - to be protected under Section 41, information must genuinely be confidential in nature. Routine service records were not created by the Army with an expectation of confidentiality and, moreover, since the transfer of these records to TNA is a routine statutory process under the Public Records Act 1958, not a voluntary disclosure between private parties, information transferred under a statutory duty cannot plausibly carry the quality of confidence required for Section 41. Service records contain different categories of information – postings, promotions, disciplinary matters, medical records, next-of-kin details – and the quality of confidence test must be applied individually to each category, not to the record as a whole. If any of the redacted information constitutes routine records, I submit that no genuine quality of confidence can attach, and such content should be released. TNA should also assist and advise exactly what qualities of confidence apply to the redacted information as per Section 16.

3. No actionable breach - I note that as next of kin, Sarah Delvalle is the person most likely to have any standing to bring such a claim — and she has actively consented to and requested this disclosure, since the person the information applies to is deceased. It is therefore not possible to identify any realistic claimant who could bring an actionable breach of confidence. I request that TNA identify the specific third party it believes would have both standing and motive to sue and provide evidence that such a party provided the information in circumstances carrying a genuine expectation of confidence.

4. Public interest - although section 41 is an absolute exemption under FOIA, the common law of confidence contains its own inherent public interest defence: a breach of confidence is not actionable where there is an overriding public interest in disclosure. Alfred Delvalle died over 20 years ago, and his service records relate to military service of clear historical significance. The passage of time, the absence of any living privacy interest, and the value of the records for historical and family research together constitute an overriding public interest in disclosure. I request that TNA demonstrate that it has applied this public interest test within the law of confidence, and explain why it concluded the public interest in maintaining confidentiality outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

I hope that this request will be dealt with promptly and with compassion.

Yours sincerely,
Robert Boughen

 

Robou

Brilliant response.....please keep us informed. If it helps, TNA have 40 working days to respond. After that you can take your complaint to the ICO. (Apologies if you already know that).

Best of luck.
John.

 

As John says Robert, that is an excellent response. I am now continuously having to assist families suffering from the same situation in terms of over-redaction. Like your case, many of these are elderly children of the soldier in question who are simply wishing to find out more about their father's WW2 service. With prolonged release dates pushing well into the 2030s, their concern is that they will not live long enough to ever read this information.

 

Thanks, both.

Yeah, I will take it to the ICO if they fail to respond.

And for sure, my grandmother (Alfie's husband) is now 95, and as much as I can hope she'll make it to 2030, there are no guarentees. Somehow it makes it feel as if it is my fault for not getting on to it sooner! But I doubt they'll be too interested in the more heartfelt elements of my argument...

 

Your letter is very well written, but I fear that the staff handling these FoI requests simply are not reading correspondence.

I have had two instances where I have written to them with requests that were ignored entirely, and their 'internal review' was nothing of the sort: it was a template with cut-and-paste links that addressed not a single specific of my case.

The conclusion of that review was "accept our apologies", which is not a conclusion as to whether their conduct had met the legal requirements.

I wish you the very best of luck, but we are not dealing with honest people here.

 

Can I add HMRC sending my tax rebate to my deceased father's solicitor!!

 

The Information Commissioner's Office is very efficient (19 days!) and upheld my complaint. The chimps at the National Archives have 30 days to provide a 'substantive response' to my request. In a sane world, that would be the service records requested, but I fully expect them to waste time padding out their inadequate review and send me that instead.

For those curious, the ICO letter is as follows:

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)
Decision notice

Date: 8 May 2026
Public Authority: The National Archives
Address: Ruskin Avenue Kew Richmond Surrey TW9 4DU

1. Request:

The complainant requested information regarding a military personnel file from The National Archives on 5 October 2024. The National Archives acknowledged this request for information and provided with the case reference number [REMOVED]

2. Commissioner’s Decision:

A public authority will breach section 10 of FOIA if it fails to respond to a request within 20 working days. For archival (closed) records held by TNA, it can have up to 10 additional working days where the request relates to a closed public record. Based on evidence available to the Commissioner, by the date of this notice the public authority has not issued a substantive response to this request. Therefore the Commissioner finds a breach of section 10.

3. Steps:

The public authority must provide a substantive response to the request in accordance with its obligations under FOIA.

The public authority must take this step within 30 calendar days of the date of this decision notice. Failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of FOIA and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.

4. Right of Appeal:

Either party has the right to appeal against this decision notice to the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights). Information about the appeals process may be obtained from:

First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) General Regulatory Chamber PO Box 11230 Leicester LE1 8FQ

Etc.

 

In all my ICO upheld complaints, I've had the records from TNA within 7 days. Hopefully you'll hear very soon.

Best.
John.

 

Fingers crossed.

I've become somewhat inured to this tediously bureaucratic process and expect them to find another way to draw it out further.

 

You were not wrong!

They've sent me twenty pages with a single redaction: the name and date of birth of my uncle (who is still alive). I know what it says because the MoD sent a photocopy of that page unreacted when I first applied for my grandfather's records, long before the current system.

Two surprises, both from Army Form W. 3149.

a) I have his medical records unreacted--and there are a lot of specifics.

b) More importantly, I found out that strictly speaking his service began before enlistment.

It seems that prior to joining the Territorial Army (1/4th Bn, the Essex Regiment) my grandfather did six weeks of training under the Military Training Act, 1939. I have seen this nowhere else. It's noted as 'Militia' (mis-spelt: Malitia). I assume this was because those thus trained were referred to as Militiamen, not formal soldiers.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Training_Act_1939

It was six months' military training, but only twenty- and twenty-one-year olds were eligible. It looks as if he managed only a month and a half before the scheme was overtaken by the outbreak of war and full conscription under the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, 1939.

National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 - Wikipedia

I'm actually very pleased with this minor discovery, but more generally, it's nice to have the existing records in glorious technicolour and higher-definition.

=======================================================

Full Process From 5 October 2024 to 14 May 2026:

• 1 year, 7 months, 9 days

Thank the lord that's over!

 

Charley Fortnum so chuffed for you, sounds like a proper result....despite the wait

 

Appreciate your own advice and feedback, mate.