A service which solves the problem of broken web links has been adopted by six government departments.

The National Archives is to officially launch its Web Continuity at the House of Lords on December 2, but the technology has been installed by a number of departments in advance.

The service redirects website users who come across a broken link to the National Archives’ UK Government Web Archive, which regularly captures and preserves 1,500 government websites for posterity.

Dr Amanda Spencer, head of the Web Continuity programme, said the National Archives had a responsibility "as the experts in preserving the future of history" to make sure that information on the web, seen as ephemeral by many, was preserved in the same way that government paperwork was in the past.

"Our web archive holds more than 340 million documents from government websites dating back to 1997, and we now archive all central government websites three times a year. The Web Continuity Project is a natural progression of this," said Dr Spencer.

“While broken web links are a problem across the whole of the internet, as pages move, information is taken down and websites change, the National Archives is the first to offer a solution,” she added.

*Speakers at the House of Lords launch event include justice minister Michael Wills, who has a special interest in public sector information, National Archives chief executive Natalie Ceeney, and Julien Masanès, director of the European Archive Foundation.