Little faith in security for religious archives

More than a third of faith organisations are unable to protect their records against fire, flood and theft, and some institutions simply shred documents when they run out of space, according to a major national survey.

Some 41 per cent of religious archives are run by volunteers with no professional training and a number cannot carry out essential work like cataloguing collections due to inadequate staffing levels.

The report concluded that action is needed at national and local level to preserve a wealth of historically important documents and to prevent gaps opening up in the future.

The project was carried out by the National Archives, the Archives and Records Association and the Religious Archives Group to build an accurate picture of information-storing by faith groups. Questionnaires were sent to 2,686 major faith organisations across the UK but just 414 replied.

The report said: "It is perhaps not surprising to see that although well over half of the questionnaires sent were to non-Christian organisations, Christian bodies account for 76 per cent of responses."

Only 17 per cent of the collections surveyed were fully catalogued and one in 10 of the institutions said their archives had been affected by mould or damp in the last five years.

Oliver Morley, chief executive of the National Archives, said: "Religious archives should be recognised as the asset they are, not only by the faiths that created them but also society as a whole, even in tough financial times."