As a recently qualified archivist, one of the things I like most about my job at the Ballast Trust is that I get to think about how the Trust should do everything. This is a great opportunity to start at the beginning and think about access policies, accession databases, forms and cataloguing procedures.

However, before I tackled the detail of documenting how we work and developing new procedures and systems, I needed to document the purpose of the Ballast Trust and provide some kind of operational statement. Most archives have a collections policy which would cover this but as we technically don't collect anything I needed a more general statement.

• Ballast Trust Policy Statement

I have put together the policy statement above, after looking at different examples of collection and access policies. It will be formally approved by the Board of Trustees at their next meeting in December.