Airpolice, Tuc, Chug, Others,
Sorry, my bad here - my sincere apologies. I missed out a key part of the problem that is also relevant to the issue of missing records of meetings.
It's now very rare for meetings within the MoD to be minuted, or otherwise recorded in any way. I spent around two years in a couple of MoD departments and in both areas, the only time meetings were minuted was when I stepped forward and did it. It was vanishingly rare for a desk officer or civil servant to take minutes. Lest casual readers think that this is a huge waste of time and effort that should be spent better on 'the real job', it's vital if you're going to record decisions that have an airworthiness impact. And it doesn't have to take long. It's easy to prepare a blank set of minutes built around the agenda, then concisely record the decisions and actions placed in the appropriate boxes. I usually aimed to get the 'RODs' (Record of Decisions) out within 48 hours of any meeting.
In one of the areas I worked in, I went so far as to prepare a Powerpoint brief on 'how to hold a meeting', with examples of what a set of RODs needed to look like. I found myself giving the brief to departmental deputy heads.
This is another area where I don't see a malicious 'cover up' so much as a basic failure to manage and record the work required to safely procure and/or support complex air equipment. Again, I blame the bosses - they are the people who can set the standards, explain clearly what they want and see that it gets done. Honestly, these days, many of them have never attended a minuted meeting.
The more I think of it, the more I see this as the reason that the Cunningham SI were unable to find any records of the meetings associated with the RTI. It's probable that the meetings were simply never recorded. As Tuc so ably points out, this is a problem that never arose with LTCs. These were formal, highly structured meetings that would never have dreamed of not issuing minutes, Indeed, most department heads I worked with would have played merry hell if they hadn't seen the regular LTC minutes coming across their desks.
The MAA should not have to tell people to minute their meetings. This should be 'ops normal' for any organisation dealing with airworthiness issues. It's absolutely basic, standard, uncontroversial stuff that should be happening, but isn't.
Best Regards as ever to those taking the minutes,
Engines
Last edited by Engines; 27th Feb 2018 at 15:50.