One of our district councils has recently approached me about whether or not the
record office would be interested in taking its Community Charge Registration
Enquiry Forms of 1989 ( the "poll tax" of blessed memory). The problem of course
is one of bulk. This one small district council has 26,000 forms and there are 6
other district councils in the county !!
This set of particular instance papers does raise a number of issues.
1. The forms would substantially, though not totally ,duplicate basic
name/address information already held in Electoral Registers as the forms
include all adults over the age of 18. There is however also information on the
forms relating to date of birth; whether the property is a second home; and
whether residents are in short stay occupation.
2. The data on the forms was entered onto the district council's mainframe. We
are not currently in a position to handle any of the digitised data.
3. If the record office took the forms, what are the issues on closure periods?
4. These forms are the successors of the ratebooks and valuation lists which
record offices have for reasons of bulk sampled for the more recent decades
(e.g. taking only every 5th or 10th year), but the significance of the Community
Charge was that it was only in place for approximately 2-3 years before being
replaced by the current Council Tax (and also in the process contributing to
Margaret Thatcher's downfall), so the tax does assume some greater historical
importance.
I would be interested if any local authority archivists have faced this problem
and more importantly come up with any solutions.
Richard Childs
County Archivist,
West Sussex Record Office
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