How long to keep HR records

The periods the law sets

Some HR records have a minimum period set in law. These are the ones you’re most likely to come across:

• PAYE records: at least three years after the end of the tax year they relate to (Income Tax (PAYE) Regulations 2003, regulation 97).
• National minimum wage records: six years, beginning with the day the next pay reference period ends (National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, regulation 59).
• Working time records: two years from the date they were made (Working Time Regulations 1998, regulation 9).
• Copies of right to work documents: at least two years after the employment has come to an end (Immigration (Restrictions on Employment) Order 2007, article 6).

Each of these is a minimum. Pay and tax records can also help you answer a question from HMRC, which is a reason you may decide on longer.

This guide is general information, not legal advice, and the periods you set beyond these minimums are your judgement.

Everything else is your call

For contracts, appraisals, grievance and disciplinary notes and the rest, no law sets a period. UK GDPR says personal data shouldn’t stay in a form that identifies someone for longer than is necessary, so each period needs a reason you can explain.

One reason to keep records after someone leaves is to be able to answer a claim about their employment.

A claim in contract can be brought for six years from when it arose (Limitation Act 1980, section 5), so you may decide to keep core employment records for some time after someone has gone.

Records that don’t belong in the file

Some information should go as soon as its purpose is served. Applications from candidates you didn’t hire, warnings that have expired under your own policy, and copies of documents you no longer need are common examples.

For now, please don’t store health information in folio. If you use folio for people records, please leave sickness records, fit notes and occupational health reports where they are.

When someone asks for their records

Anyone, including a former employee, can ask for a copy of the personal data you have about them under Article 15 of UK GDPR.

You generally have one month from receiving the request to answer, and you can extend that by two further months, with notice, where the requests are complex or numerous (Article 12A, inserted by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025).

That’s far easier when everything about one person is in one place, filed under an employee number that doesn’t change when their name does.

Writing your schedule

For each kind of people record, your schedule should say:

• what the record is, in the words your team uses
• how long it stays, and the event the period counts from, such as the end of the tax year or the day the person left
• the reason for the period: the regulation that sets it, or your own reasoning
• who can agree to it going early

Review it when the law changes, and keep the old versions, so you can show what applied when.

How folio will help

In folio, each person will have their own folder, named by employee number, and each kind of record will have a retention class with the period you’ve chosen.

When a class ends, folio will dispose of the records under it, and each disposal will go in your ledger.

You’ll be able to set people folders so every view needs a reason. The people and HR page shows how a day with folio will look.

Read next

• folio for people and HR
• Answering an audit request
• Filing records and organising folders