ABSTRACT
By 1950 provision had been made for central government record services (the PRO), while the HMC advised users and owners of private and local archives. Although the Master of the Rolls Archives Committee had not had the impact which the BRA might have hoped for, records legislation was reviewed in the postwar period. Two significant reports on central government records were published: Grigg in 1954 (which led to new public records legislation in 1958) and Wilson in 1981, which had less impact. Local government records at last received limited statutory protection (in 1962) and ecclesiastical records provision was improved in 1978. The weakness of local government legislation for archives was exposed when the structures of local government were altered in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2003, the administrative reorganisation of the HMC and the PRO to form The National Archives (TNA), proposals for national records and archives legislation and a government-sponsored investigation into the state of archive services in England finally offered hope of radical improvements in the early twenty-first century. Chapter 2 examines these developments and completes the picture of the government and legislative framework.
