Public inquiry and government eDiscovery, on the inquiry's timetable.

Statutory public inquiries, judicial reviews, Parliamentary select committee inquiries and volume Freedom of Information and Subject Access work make the public sector one of the most demanding environments for eDiscovery in the United Kingdom. The obligations are constitutional, the timescales are set by the inquiry or the court rather than the responding body, and the volumes are, in the largest inquiries, historically unprecedented.

We support central government departments, arm's length bodies, local authorities, NHS trusts, police forces, coroners and independent regulators on the eDiscovery obligations attached to inquiry and inquest work. We also act for corporate and individual core participants who face a Rule 9 request and need to marshal a proportionate, defensible response on the inquiry's timetable.

Collection at public sector scale requires a preservation-first mindset. The universe of custodians and repositories in a central government matter routinely runs into the hundreds, and the record spans email, collaboration platforms, case management systems, legacy archives, physical documents digitised at scale, and increasingly, ministerial and official mobile messaging. We work with departmental IT, records management and information governance teams to preserve at source, capture with full audit trail, and centralise in a single review workspace where the inquiry team can operate.

Review is configured for the substantive issues the inquiry chair has identified, with issue coding aligned to the terms of reference. Personal data is handled under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, with special-category safeguards for health, criminal justice and safeguarding material. National security material is segregated at ingestion and reviewed under the appropriate clearance regime, with vetted reviewers and separate infrastructure where the matter requires it.

Volume FOI and SAR work is engineered rather than resourced. Where a single request touches tens of thousands of documents, we apply targeted searches, entity extraction and reviewer-side redaction under Section 40 and the wider exemption framework, with a redaction log that supports any subsequent Information Commissioner or Tribunal challenge. The exercise stays proportionate and defensible even at very high volumes.

Production is delivered in the formats the inquiry, the court, the tribunal or the requesting individual actually needs, with hyperlinked bundles for hearing use and rolling productions where the timetable demands. The evidential record supports the inquiry's fact-finding function and, equally important, survives the disclosure challenges that inevitably follow.