A coalition of consumer groups has sent an open letter to MPs and the FCA urging the regulator to abandon its plans to delete most emails automatically after a year.

The FCA plans to start automatically deleting emails from 1 April.

The letter asks Emma Reynolds MP (Economic Secretary to the Treasury), Dame Meg Hiller MP (chair of the Treasury Committee), Helen Charlton (chair of the FCA’s Financial Services Consumer Network), and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (chair of the Lords FS Regulations Committee) to urgently seek an undertaking from the FCA to abandon the email deletion plans.

The letter claims that the deletion of emails would adversely impact Freedom of Information requests, Treasury-mandated external reviews, legal challenges and also the FCA’s own ongoing regulatory work.

The consumer groups who co-signed the letter include the Transparency Task Force, Age UK, Better Finance, ShareSoc, Unchecked, the UK Shareholders Association, Tax Justice Network, Positive Money, The Finance Innovation Lab and the Police Commission.

The FCA has said that deleting emails would not delete evidence, hide information, or reduce transparency.

The consumer groups rejected the FCA’s defence of the policy as, “a claimed intent to preserve important emails cannot be as effective as retaining the entirety” because "the organisation and its staff cannot possibly anticipate with complete accuracy which emails may be needed in the future, whether for FoI or DSAR requests, Parliamentary Committee inquiries, HMT inquiries, litigation, judicial reviews - or its own supervisory and enforcement activities."

Anthony Stansfeld, former Thames Valley Police Crime Commissioner, said evidence must not be “thrown away”.

He said: “The forensic value of just one email can make all the difference in prosecuting a case. You just don’t do it and I’d be suspicious of any statutory body tasked with investigation, regulation or enforcement wanting to automatically delete potential evidence after 12 months.

“All kinds of phrases come to mind about how to express how naive the FCA’s proposed policy is, but I’ll resist the temptation to do so, for now.”

The FCA is due to be questioned by the Treasury Committee next week.