Hillsborough panel sees 'daunting' scale of task

The Hillsborough Independent Panel is overseeing the public disclosure of archives held by the emergency services, the city council and other public bodies in Sheffield.

The documents relate to the disaster in April 1989 when 96 Liverpool fans died in a crush at Hillsborough Stadium after going to see their team play Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final.

The panel, chaired by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, was set up last year after the 20th anniversary of the tragedy.

Today the group visited the archives in Sheffield to look at where the documents are being held and to talk to staff involved in the project.

The bishop said the archive of around 600 boxes of material was "daunting" in its size but he praised the work which has already been done to bring it together and organise it.

The seven members are broadcaster Peter Sissons; public information expert Christine Gifford; TV producer and researcher Katy Jones; Paul Leighton, former deputy chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland; academic criminologist Professor Phil Scraton; Bill Kirkup, former associate medical director at the Department of Health; and archivist Sarah Tyacke.

After his initial look at the documents, the bishop said: "The reason we're doing this is because this is the principal purpose of the panel, which is to oversee the maximum possible disclosure of the documents which are contained in the Sheffield archive.

"This today was our first opportunity of walking through the archive and seeing the shelves of material."

He said: "It's a very large archive.

"I'm very impressed by the way the archive has been kept.

"This is a three-star archive which speaks of the excellence of the service here."

He added: "It is daunting and that's when you realise you need a team. There's no one person that can do this."

The panel convened for the first time in Liverpool earlier this month when it met representatives of Hillsborough victims' families.

The bishop said the panel's tasks were to ensure the maximum public disclosure of the documents and to write a report detailing their contents.

The group will complete the task by making recommendations about a national archive of the Hillsborough documents.

The bishop has said they would "leave no stone unturned" in their search for the truth, which included holding meetings with South Yorkshire Police.

Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry into the disaster, which reported in 1990, criticised senior police officers on duty at the match for a "failure of control" and recommended the introduction of all-seater stadiums.

But the families have continued to call for further inquiries into the deaths.

The bishop said today: "We've got two years in which to do this work.

"The next time we meet will be to establish the protocol of how we will actually access this material.

"Today has enabled us to get some sense of the size of the operation and to meet some key staff."

Some people have estimated the number of documents in the Hillsborough archive could total around two million.