Records of the Council, Committees and Forums Scope and content: Committee records, consisting mainly of signed minutes, reports and other supporting papers. Minutes are mainly indexed, within the volumes or separately. They usually follow a standard format: Supporting papers and reports from Council Officers (e.g. Borough Architect and Planning Officer, Treasurer, Town Clerk and Housing Officer) are interleaved with the actual Committee minutes - to make full sense of an issue or subject, it is necessary to move back and forth between the two elements: Minutes and Papers. The papers from the 1970s are sometimes coded: o Papers for Action o Papers for Consideration o Papers for Information Most committees from the period 1971-1986 have unrestricted minutes and restricted minutes which were filed in separate volumes and there were two agendas for this period: o Section 1 - recording that part of the meeting which was open to the public o Section 2 - recording that part of the meeting that closed to the public, 'as publicity would be prejudicial to the public interest by reason of the confidential nature of the business to be transacted and because of the need to receive/consider recommendations/advice from the appropriate officers of the council.' More about exempt or Section 2 meetings: The Press and public were excluded from meetings dealing with "exempt information" under schedule 12a of the Local Government Act 1972. Known as Section 2 meetings these often included decisions around named cases relating to individuals, families and/or staff. Section 100 (a) of the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 reinforced this: 'the public and press be excluded from the meeting for consideration of Section 2 items on the grounds that they contain exempt or restricted information as defined in Part 1 Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972.’ The minutes and papers from Section 2 meetings are therefore subject to Data Protection restrictions. 1964-2010