Catalogue description Post Office: Registered Files, Minuted Papers (England and Wales)

This record is held by BT Group Archives

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Details of POST 30
Reference: POST 30
Title: Post Office: Registered Files, Minuted Papers (England and Wales)
Description:

This minutes comprises"minuted" papers relating to Post Office services in England and Wales for the period 1792 to 1952. It also includes reference to Irish and Scottish services until 1840."Minuted" papers were those papers which had been submitted to the Postmaster General for a decision, and then been retained in the Post Office registry. At first, the papers"minuted" tended only to be the particular case submitted to the Postmaster General but, as time went on, registry staff followed a practice of continuing to add physically to an existing minuted case all other cases on that subject which came to hand. As a result, the minuted papers frequently consist of quite large bundles of files on a common subject spanning many years. The date range of the files is consequently often much earlier or much later than the date suggested by the"Former Reference" used by the registry staff and, in many cases, the precise dates covered by the files have not yet been listed.

The subject of individual files among the minuted papers can be wide-ranging, from the mundane administrative minutiae to policy decisions on developments of critical importance.

Please see The Postal Museum's online catalogue and BT Archives online catalogue for descriptions of individual records within this series.
Note: Catalogue entries below series level were removed from Discovery, The National Archives' online catalogue, in November 2016 because fuller descriptions were available in The Postal Museum's online catalogue and BT Archives online catalogue.
Date: 1792-1952
Arrangement:

The current series arrangement reflects that adopted by the Post Office registry. Separate series reflect the four different minute series which were in use until 1921: Packet Services, England & Wales, Ireland, and Scotland (POST 29 - POST 32). The amalgamation of the minute series into one general series in 1921 is likewise followed in the current arrangement of the papers (POST 33). A separate series contains the papers filed under the Decimal Filing system in wartime (POST 102). Following the decentralisation of the registry in 1955, the previous minuted papers series was closed and a new series set up for the listing of both the central registry's files and the decentralised registries' files from 1955 (POST 122). In addition, there are two series which reflect later creations of series to accomodate papers which had, for various reasons, not been assimilated into the main series (TCB 2 and POST 121)
Related material:

See Postmaster General's reports in POST 42

Documents relating to WH Preece (1892-1988) are in TCK 89
Held by: BT Group Archives
The Postal Museum, not available at The National Archives
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Post Office Registry, 1793-1973
Physical description: 4798 file(s)
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure
Immediate source of acquisition:

This series of records was divided between the Post Office Archives , in 1991, when telecommunications records were transferred to BT custody.

and BT Archives , in 1991, when telecommunications records were transferred to BT custody.
Administrative / biographical background:

The system of "minuting" papers submitted to the Postmaster General by the Secretary to the Post Office for a decision (ie numbering the papers, and separately copying a note of the paper as a "minute" into volumes indexed by subject) was introduced in 1793. It remained in use by the Post Office Headquarters registry until 1973.

Until 1921, several different major minute series were in use: that concerned with the Packet Service (POST 29), and those concerned with England and Wales (POST 30), Ireland (POST 31) and Scotland (POST 32). From 1790 until 1841, parallel "Report" series were in use by the Secretary (POST 39 & POST 40)

In 1921, the several different minute series were replaced by a single all-embracing series (POST 33). This was suspended in 1941 as a wartime measure when a Decimal Filing system came into use (POST 102), but was resurrected in 1949. In 1955 the registration of Headquarters files began to be decentralised under several local registries serving particular departments, although the "minuting" of cases considered worthy of preservation, and the assimilation of later cases with earlier existing minuted bundles, continued until 1973.

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