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Histórico
A number of major changes took place during the period covered by this series. From 1 April 1922, Post Office services in Southern Ireland were transferred to the control of the provisional Irish Government. The growth in administration meant that aspects of work relating only to matters of local interest were devolved from central headquarters to district surveyors. In 1934 as part of a general reorganisation of the Post Office, a Director General was appointed to replace the office of Secretary to The Post Office. At the same time a Post Office Board was created under the chairmanship of the Postmaster General. Further changes in 1934 led to the replacement of district surveyors by regional directors, who were given full powers of day-to-day control of local postal and telecommunications affairs in their regions. This reorganisation was complete by the mid-1940s, with an increasing amount of work concerning local affairs being devolved from Headquarters, leaving it to deal only with matters of general policy and those outside the scope of regional authority.
The system of 'minuting' papers submitted to the Postmaster General by the Secretary to the Post Office for a decision (ie numbering the papers, and separately copying a note of the paper as a 'minute' into volumes indexed by subject) was introduced in 1793. It remained in use by the Post Office Headquarters registry until 1973.
Until 1921, several different major minute series were in use: that concerned with the Packet Service (POST 29), and those concerned with England and Wales (POST 30), Ireland (POST 31) and Scotland (POST 32). From 1790 until 1841, parallel 'Report' series were in use by the Secretary (POST 39 and POST 40)
In 1921, the several different minute series were replaced by a single all-embracing series (POST 33). This was suspended in 1941 as a wartime measure when a Decimal Filing system came into use (POST 102), but was resurrected in 1949. In 1955 the registration of Headquarters files began to be decentralised under several local registries serving particular departments, although the 'minuting' of cases considered worthy of preservation, and the assimilation of later cases with earlier existing minuted bundles, continued until 1973.
For further details of how this class relates to the other report and minute classes, see the following section 'Related Material'.