A File Reopened
A draft government briefing document sits inside the file that answers CAS-279699. According to The National Archives (TNA), it was never sent to the person it was written for and never finished. It is, by TNA’s own description, a piece of paper that went nowhere. It stays sealed from public view under an exemption built for advice that shaped a decision, and that mismatch, more than any redaction pattern, is what this file leaves standing open.
A Second Look at an Old Answer
CAS-279699 is a Freedom of Information request addressed to The National Archives, asking the archive to revisit material it had withheld in an earlier case, CAS-170490-N0Q6P3. That earlier request, filed through the WhatDoTheyKnow website, drew a Section 36 exemption across the board, a provision of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 that lets a public authority withhold material whose release would damage collective ministerial responsibility, discourage frank internal advice, or otherwise harm the conduct of public affairs. The follow-up request pointed to two developments that, in the requester’s view, had changed the calculation: the Ministry of Justice had concluded its consultation on the storage and retention of original will documents, published December 15, 2023, with responses due by February 23, 2024, and an Upper Tribunal appeal touching the same material, case reference UA-2025-000130-GIA, had been granted in part. TNA published its response on December 3, 2025, as a four-part PDF, available on request through a dedicated mailbox named in the response, RMDclosedrecordsrequests@nationalarchives.gov.uk, with an accompanying explanatory annex. The record does not give the date the original request was filed, or the exact date the tribunal appeal was lodged.
What Came Back, and What Didn’t
The withheld material concerns correspondence between TNA, the Ministry of Justice, and the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives about preserving probate records. By TNA’s account, that correspondence had originally been withheld under Section 36 in full. On review, part of it was released. Other parts were not released but moved to a different exemption, Section 35(1)(b), which covers communications involving government ministers rather than the broader public-affairs categories in Section 36. Redactions covering personal information, applied under Section 40(2), remain throughout, on both the newly released pages and the pages still withheld.
The Test Run Again
TNA’s response states that its Qualified Person, a role held by the archive’s Chief Executive and Keeper, carried out a fresh Public Interest Test, the balancing exercise FOI law requires between the case for disclosure and the case for continued secrecy. The finding, as recorded: some material no longer met the threshold for exemption and was released. Other material did, including the draft briefing document, withheld under Section 36(2)(b) on the grounds that release would inhibit the free and frank exchange of advice that clause is written to protect.
An Ordinary Explanation, With One Loose End
TNA presents the whole exercise as routine. FOI exemptions are not permanent; once the circumstances that justified them change, a review can release material that would once have stayed sealed. That fits what came out: a consultation concluded, an appeal proceeded, and some correspondence followed it into the open. It does not obviously fit the one item singled out for continued protection. A document TNA itself describes as never sent to its recipient and never finished is, by definition, a document nobody acted on. The exemption applied to it exists to protect deliberation that fed into a decision. The annex does not explain how a draft that reached no one and was never completed still needs that protection. It restates the exemption instead of addressing the gap.
Where the File Stops Telling You Anything
The version of TNA’s response available for review is truncated before it sets out the full reasoning behind the public interest balance for the withheld items; the conclusion is stated, not shown in full. The content of the draft briefing and the reclassified correspondence is redacted throughout, so there is no way to know, from this file, what the “safe space” language is protecting. UA-2025-000130-GIA appears in the record only as “granted, in part,” with no indication of which parts of the appeal succeeded or what remains contested before the tribunal. None of that is evidence of anything beyond itself. It describes how far the paperwork goes and where it stops.
A Claim the Record Doesn’t Carry
The request behind CAS-279699 argues that the withheld material references the Public Records Act 1958 in ways relevant to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation. That is the requester’s own reasoning, offered to justify the request, not a finding TNA has confirmed or a passage TNA has quoted. The response does not take it up directly. It belongs on the record as a claim made about the file, not as a fact drawn from it.