What Is The Thirty-year Rule?

The so-called thirty-year rule is a provision of the Public Records Act 1967 under which British government documents become automatically available for public inspection thirty years after they were first created. When they become eligible for public viewing, the documents are transferred to the National Archives at Kew. Typically, all the documents for a given year are made available on the 1st of January of the year thirty years following so, around this time of year, British newspapers often contain stories relating to events three decades before. The Lord Chancellor's office in 1965 was given the power to lengthen the period for which a document would be kept secret, or to indicate that it should be kept under wraps indefinitely. The Freedom of Information Act 2000, which came into force in 2005, in some cases now allows members of the public to gain access to government documents before the full thirty years have elapsed.

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