We know a lot about storing valuable documents in Cambridge. The Wren Library in Trinity College is one of the most famous libraries in the world. It was originally designed by the world-famous architect Sir Christopher Wren in 1676, and has been open for since 1695.  It’s been keeping books and documents safe for more than 300 years.  For businesses in Cambridge, there are other and better solutions.

The Need for Securing Your Documents

Confidential information in the wrong hands can damage your reputation, expose clients to fraud or embarrassment, and breach data protection law, leading to heavy fines. Strong systems are essential to prevent unauthorised access. Many businesses secure online data but overlook paper records. Protecting paper documents requires three key steps.

1. Store them in a secure, safe purpose-built storage facility, run by a dedicated document storage company.
2. Scan the documents and store the scans in a document management system.
3. Securely destroy the paper documents when they become redundant, by shredding them.

A Helpful Company

If you want help with any of these ways forward, then The Hill Company can help. They have secure storage centres just down the M11 from Cambridge, in Essex. They have worked with many organisations across both public and private sectors, each with unique requirements for secure document storage. Hill meets these needs as a medium-sized company—large enough to handle most demands, yet small enough to remain agile and creative.

Safe & Secure Document Storage

Storing documents is easy.  Storing essential business and legal documents safely is more difficult.  It requires:

• protection from fire
• protection from theft, or unauthorised access
• a secure management system, so nothing is ever lost
• purpose-built premises with purpose-built racking

For it to be cost-effective for businesses, a one size fits all approach does not work.  Different requirements include:

• scan on demand to deliver documents digitally within hours
• quick access for documents that are regularly used
• low cost storage for documents that are very rarely used
• extra secure storage for legal documents like wills and leases
• implementing a retention schedule so that documents are securely shredded when they are no longer required

The Hill Company offers all of these.  There’s more about their storage service here.

Helpful Customer Services.

Hill  are proud of their reputation for having a reliable, helpful Customer Services team. This is shown in the care and attention they pay to selecting and training their team, and their high staff retention levels. They have won awards for their excellent Customer Service.  All parts of their business share this focus on the needs of their clients.

Built In Security

Hill Company prioritise making your documents both secure and easy to access. That’s why they only purpose built document storage centres that they own, and which are kitted out to their precise requirements.  Those requirements include

• State of the art fire protection
• Full external security, including 24/7 monitoring of CCTV
• Full internal security, including logging all accesses to all parts of the building

The Document Scanning Company

In 2025 Hill Company launched a dedicated website for scanning, The Document Scanning Company.  The site makes it quick and easy for businesses to get a quote for their scanning requirements.  Simply answer 4 or 5 questions, and they will reply with a quote as soon as possible. It also makes it quick and easy to get your documents scanned. All you have to do is get them ready for collection.  The Scanning Company will

• collect them from your offices, anywhere in the UK
• carefully prepare them for scanning, including removing staples and clips, so you don’t have to
• scan, using their experienced teams, and high tech equipment
• Use OCR to “read” the text and make it searchable and indexable
• return the documents to you, or store them, or shred them

This can be more cost-effective than document storage, especially if the documents need to be retained for the foreseeable future.  The entire contents of a filing cabinet, or of many archive boxes, can fit on one CD or DVD after scanning.  Discs are more robust than paper, and so less likely to be damaged or degraded.  If access to the documents is required, then a document management system makes it simple for staff to access the document they need, and simple for management to control and audit that access.

Another plus is that scanning can be done in conjunction with OCR indexing of the documents.  This makes it possible to search by keyword, just as you do using Google.  It can save hours of staff time if you need to find all documents on a specific topic, or all documents relating to a specific person or organisation.