The Policy Changes

Given Moorview absolutely love to distribute documents in one of the more inaccessible formats, PDF, I spent time converting these to an accessible Markdown format. I was then able to analyse them for changes.

Here are both the original Version 2 PDF, Version 3 PDF of A01 Record Keeping and Document Retention.

Here are more accessible Markdown versions of Version 2 and Version 3.

Version 3 was written and reviewed on the very date I reported that an email that had gone ‘missing’.

So, besides minor grammar and plural choices, a global search and replace for ’employees’ → ‘team members’ and ‘clients’ → ‘people we support’, the main updates to the policy were the entire 4.x section and a more defined 5.x section (which actually codified the use of ISO8601 style dates in filenames. I like ISO8601 dates, so that’s a nice change).

The policy update is full of “will consider” and “will consider the data retention guidelines provided“. It is very non-explicitly defined, so even within the policy, it is all dependent on Moorview’s interpretation of said policy, which they could ‘interpret’ any way they would like.

The word ‘consider’ appears 11 times in the new 4.x section, and twice in 5.x

The relevant new section that was interesting to me was within 4.10.

“Moorview Care will consider whether personal data stored on computers, including in emails, is automatically backed up and how to achieve deletion of those backups or ensure that the archived personal data is automatically deleted after a certain period of time. Moorview Care will also consider circulating guidance internally to encourage team members to regularly delete emails.”

This update stood out to me, as the policy was updated the very day I made Moorview aware of an email the Registered Manager sent to my social worker, that when asking them for a copy of, they could not find on their systems. They told me to ask my social worker for a copy of said email. Moorview did not provide this email in the first SAR request I sent them back in November 2025.

So even based on this policy section, Moorview had not considered an appropriate archival or backup system for being able to retrieve client data (because they could not retrieve this email the Registered Manager had deleted) and is definitely not in line with the rest of the policy that says client data and ‘Any social care records for adults’ will be retained “8 years from the leave date”. I would ‘consider‘ opinionated emails about me that were sent to my social worker as ‘client data’.

When I specifically asked for the data retention policy that applied during November 2025 (the time of my first SAR request), I was given the current policy, I had to persist to get the version that would have applied at the time of my original request, which did not have the 4.10 section and Moorview were never able to provide said email regardless.

Version 2 said it should have been reviewed in January 2026, and there is no version number gap between Version 2 and Version 3.

Moorview would say this is all a ‘coincidence’, but given everything, I do not believe so.