Abstract
This article examines the effects of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 which makes changes to the accountability of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) by making it responsible to an independent police authority in the same way as other police forces in England and Wales. This is likely to affect the legal status of its records as ‘public records’. A comparison is made between current MPS practices and those of other police forces, together with an examination of the use of police records at the Public Record Office. The article attempts to show that, by making the MPS responsible to an independent authority rather than the Home Secretary, it is the authority, rather than the force, which will be subject to the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972 for records purposes, and the resulting change in status may result in a more fragmentary preservation of historical material.
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