Ministry of Labour and successors: Circulars and Codes of Instructions

Instructions on departmental administration issued to Divisional Offices, Medical Board Centres and Labour Exchanges by the Ministry of Labour's Central Office, (later the Central Office of the Department of Employment). The first few circulars in the series were issued by the Board of Trade, until its responsibilities in this area passed to the newly-created Ministry of Labour in January 1917. The series also contains printed volumes on industrial and occupational classifications and job information manuals.

LAB 29/763-797: these entries concern digital records from the Employment Service Communication System (ESCOM), the internal communications system used by the Employment Service. It was part of an application called TROVE developed by a software company called RINGWOOD. In operation it was supported by a team based at Sheffield. Following the merger of the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency (BA) to form the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), ESCOM was gradually replaced by the DWP Intranet. These documents formed the ESCOM library at the time of its replacement.

Digital records (LAB 29/763-797) originally in this series were transferred to LAB 120 as part of the programme of migration of digital records at The National Archives in March 2008:

LAB 120

1973 to 2005 Department of Employment

Topics

Labour

Trade and commerce

Computing

Pay and pensions

Communications

These instructions stem from the legislation on the Labour Exchange Act 1909, the Trade Boards Act 1909, and the Education (Choice of Employment) Act 1910. The responsibility for administering the legislation fell to the Labour Department of the Board of Trade until the Ministry of Labour was set up in 1917. Administration of the unemployment benefit scheme (UI) was transferred to the Ministry of National Insurance in 1945, but the Department continues to do the day-to-day work as an agency.

The circulars and codes were issued by Headquarters to the Divisional (later Regional) Offices and to the Labour (later Employment) Exchanges and Local Offices. Circulars contained instructions and information of a permanent or quasi-permanent nature on the implementation of legislation and on the administration of the Department. They were issued in a numbered series, each corresponding to a different subject. Subsequent circulars appeared as sub-numbers and these could be amended by supplements. From time to time circular instructions were gathered together and codified. Circular minutes were issued weekly and contained, inter alia, a list of the latest circulars and codes.