Hillsborough Independent Panel

The Hillsborough Independent Panel was established in 2010 to oversee the disclosure of all documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Chaired by Bishop James Jones, the Panel published its report on 12 September 2012, making nine recommendations focused on preserving and providing public access to the disclosed materials.

The government formally accepted five of the nine recommendations (56%), with no published response to the remaining four. The accepted recommendations concerned coroners' record retention, transfer of government documents to The National Archives, establishment of a distributed archive, public access to digital materials, and permanent preservation of the digital archive.

Published evidence indicates progress on several fronts. The Coroners (Investigations) Regulations 2013 introduced statutory requirements for record retention. Government documents disclosed to the Panel were transferred to The National Archives, and a Distributed Permanent Archive was established across Sheffield Archives, Liverpool Record Office, and The National Archives at Kew. On 12 September 2012, the Panel launched a website containing 450,000 pages from 85 organisations, which The National Archives has preserved.

However, no published evidence has been identified for action on four recommendations. These include conducting a broader review of police records under the Public Records Act 1958, establishing formal mechanisms for private organisations to deposit further records, appointing an Editor-in-Chief for the Digital Archive, and developing protocols for adding or removing archive material. Without an Editor-in-Chief appointment, the digital archive exists as a static snapshot rather than an actively managed resource.

While significant archival preservation has occurred, the absence of published evidence for nearly half the recommendations suggests incomplete follow-through on the Panel's vision for ongoing management and expansion of the Hillsborough archive.