Hillsborough Independent Panel

The Hillsborough Independent Panel was established in 2010 to oversee the disclosure of documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Chaired by Bishop James Jones, it published its report on 12 September 2012. Its nine recommendations concern the permanent archive: records held by coroners, police forces and central government, the distributed archive, and the Panel's digital archive and website.

The record holds no complete government response to the nine recommendations. The statements that do exist address two of them. On recommendation 2 (bringing police force records under the Public Records Act 1958), the Home Office announced on 31 October 2013 that a working group would be set up, naming adding police forces to the Act as one option, and that it would report with a proposal and action plan by the end of June 2014. A House of Lords written answer of 29 June 2016 (HL647) said the options were still being considered and that no decision on implementation had been taken. On 20 July 2023 a Home Office written statement (HCWS986) introduced a Code of Practice on Police Information and Records Management, which it said was developed in response to recommendations in the Panel's report and in Bishop Jones's 2017 report. Section 6.2 of the Government's December 2023 response to the Jones report (CP 990) describes a working group review that concluded adherence to the Public Records Act alone would not have prevented the problems that followed the disaster, and recommended extending the 2005 Code instead. None of these statements says the Panel's recommendation was accepted or that police forces have been added to the Act.

On recommendation 8 (access to the digital archive), a Home Office written answer of 8 November 2022 (UIN 75808) said the Government had ensured public access to the online archive material, available through The National Archives website since January 2022. The answer does not address access at Liverpool and Sheffield, which the recommendation also names. On recommendation 4 (a distributed permanent archive), the Independent Office for Police Conduct's July 2025 stakeholder update links its planned return of the Hillsborough material it holds to the Panel's recommendation, with a first return planned for the end of August 2025. The IOPC is not a government department.

No government response or progress statement is recorded for recommendations 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9. That describes what has been found on the public record; it is not a finding about whether action was taken. The National Archives' catalogue (series HO 536) lists dated snapshots of the Panel's website from 2012 as public records held at Kew. That is a description of a holding, not a statement by any body about recommendation 9. No body has declared any of the nine recommendations delivered.