To ask what commercial storage means in regards to health records

[Beatinghearts]

I’ve been told my paper notes will be in commercial storage and therefore it will take longer to access them.

Literally that they are in a secure storage facility. Like with Clark's archive or ClearData. These are run by commercial companies and are like Fort Knox in terms of security. Much safer than them being shoved in a cupboard in a hospital or GP practice with minimal security! But as you can imagine these are basically huge secure warehouses and your file will be requested and added to a list of ones to retrieve.

It's quite common for records not in active us to be stored off site in a secure location, usually by a third party company such as Iron Mountain.

There will be a well defined procedure to request the set of records to be brought back from storage, it will just add additional time to the NHS processing your subject access request as they have stated.

Thank you I’ve know other peoples medical records be lost by being put in storage so I’m hoping mine haven’t been.