Acceptance of a minute must be a deliberate act. Even if it is not thought necessary to read out the whole of an agreed draft minute again at the moment of acceptance, the meeting must be sufficiently aware of its terms from the preceding exercise to be conscious of uniting to accept it. It is at the moment of accepting each minute that the united meeting allows you to record it as a minute of the meeting. It is good practice for the rough minutes to be signed at the meeting’s conclusion. This also gives the clerk authority to sign any fair copy once it is certain it has been correctly transcribed. Very minor amendments such as punctuation and points of style may be made, but any alteration of the sense should be avoided most carefully. It is undesirable that minutes should be prepared afterwards for presentation to a later meeting when the membership may not be the same as that which originally deliberated.

The sending of copies of the relevant minutes to those who are required to take follow-up action after the meeting is the responsibility of the clerk.

You are responsible for the safekeeping of the minutes once the meeting has accepted them. They belong to the meeting, and only the meeting has authority to amend, countermand or supersede them by a subsequent minute. If minor corrections or annotations of a factual nature are necessary, these must be indicated as such in the margins or as footnotes in order to safeguard the integrity of the minutes.

For the safekeeping of records see 4.39–4.41