> In accordance with Department of Health guidelines we are
> retaining records of "Equipment - records of non fixed
> equipment, including specification, test records, maintenance
> records and logs" for 11 years (Consumer Protection Act 1987).
> Can anyone clarify if this is 11 years from the date of the
> record or 11 years after the end of the life of the equipment?
Just to follow up on my query. I haven't really found a definitive
answer, but had a couple of helpful responses.
One person said:
"I think you will find it the latter. But just a word of caution we keep
our equipment records for 15 years which is an insurance company
requirement. It may be worth checking."
Another said:
"I've often wondered about this period of '11 years' myself - I've never
been able to find the person responsible for it to find out exactly what
it's based on. I've assumed that it's based on the limitation period
prescribed by s 11A of the Limitation Act 1980 (inserted by Part 1 of
Schedule 1 of the CPA 1987), i.e. 10 years, with a year added 'just in
case'. I haven't been able to find any other likely basis for it. If
I'm right, the Consumer Protection Act 1987 is obviously not the correct
citation. In any event, records relating to different types of
equipment might require different retention periods, depending on the
purpose of the equipment and the context in which is was used. There
are quite a lot of entries relating to equipment records in the most
recent JISC retention schedule for HE. This is the link:
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/partnerships/records-retention-he
If you type 'equipment' in the Search box, it will produce a list of all
the record classes."
Thanks to those who replied - the info was helpful. I think I'm going to
err on the side of caution.
Catherine
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