Catalogue description Civil Service Commission: Regulations, Rules and Memoranda, Open and Limited Competitions

The filing and arrangement of the records has been inconsistent and not always intelligible. This may be owing to changes in recruitment policy and thereby changes in the way documents were referenced or accessed, but at times it appears to have been simply poor filing practice. Each competition was assigned a paper number and listed. Paper numbers tend to reflect the contemporary method of arrangement. This practice was abandoned with CSC 6/79. Between CSC 6/1 and CSC 6/43 documents are arranged by date of examination or the date of memorandum. Each piece covers a period from one year up to a span of several. For CSC 6/44-52 this is simplified to papers being arranged by month. Here a piece is equal to a year. From 1947 (CSC 6/53) until 1963 (CSC 6/68) the order of documents within piece numbers alters frequently. During this period competition numbers for each vacancy are introduced and letter prefixes (a short-hand reference to a broad area, such as 'S' for Science) to these begin to appear. Broadly speaking, between CSC 6/53 and CSC 6/62 the documents are arranged by month but with a general section (which becomes increasingly larger) placed first consisting of non-specified date, reconstruction and limited competitions. Between CSC 6/63 and CSC 6/68 arrangement by month is not consistently used (sometimes replaced with no obvious form of arrangement).

From 1964 (CSC 6/69) the arrangement of the records begins to settle. CSC 6/69-73 are arranged by month. From CSC 6/74 to CSC 6/78 there is a sub-arrangement by competion number within arrangement by month (this now clearly being based upon closing date for application). CSC 6/79 to CSC 6/81 follow the same arrangement but are listed only by month and paper numbers. From CSC 6/82 the sheer bulk of documents meant that paper numbers were abandoned as too time consuming but the arrangement by month and sub-arrangement by competion numbers were retained. From CSC 6/90 a piece is usually equal to half a year.