Promises made in our information management charter apply to information held in almost all formats:

• electronic files of numbers, text or other data
• scanned images of paper documents, stored electronically
• paper files and documents
• microfilm
• audio-visual records such as CCTV images or interview tapes.

An important exception is personal data held in unstructured paper files. We keep as little unstructured information as possible, since it is difficult to access and use. If information about you is kept in this way you can still ask for a copy of it, but if we cannot locate it reasonably easily we will tell you so.

In all formats information is stored and ordered in ways which make it efficient for us to use. It is not always stored in a way that will enable the items that you want to be easily found. Electronic data can often be searched to locate particular items, but this cannot be done with manual files. For this reason some requests may not be possible within any cost constraints that apply.