Policy Statement

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) should only retain records for an appropriate amount of time as stated in the Code of Practice on the Management of Policing Information (MOPI 2005), the Data Protection Act (DPA 2018) and other relevant legislation. The length of a retention period varies and is based on the record’s business purpose, legislative, statutory, and best practice requirements. This applies to both physical and digital records.

GMP is committed to ensuring only records with historical information/research value are retained post the retention period of a record. Once a record’s retention period is completed, it should be appraised to determine whether it holds any ongoing value for the organisation; if it does not then the record will be disposed.

When applying retention periods, appraisal decisions and disposal methods, GMP will align with national best practices. The benefit of aligning GMP with national policing standards is as follows:

• Information can be managed in a consistent and compliant manner.
• GMP can be confident about disposing of records when it is appropriate to do so.
• GMP is compliant with legislation such as the Data Protection Act 2018, which prohibits the storage of personal data for longer than necessary.

Aims

The aim of this policy and procedure is to provide GMP officers and staff with process regarding the retention and disposal of both policing and non-policing records which are acquired, created, handled, shared and stored by GMP.

A further aim of this policy and procedure is to provide a clear process for GMP officers and staff who gather, handle and store data generated/acquired from the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA) in a safe and secure manner.