Memorandum submitted by the Association
of Chief Archivists in Local Government (ACALG)
I am responding to the call for submissions
to the Culture Media and Sport Committee's inquiry on Caring
for our Collections on behalf of the Association of Chief
Archivists in Local Government (ACALG). ACALG did provide written
evidence to the previous inquiry on Protecting, preserving
and making available our nation's heritage but we felt it
appropriate to present further evidence for this new inquiry in
view of its particular focus on archives, along with museums and
galleries, and also the changes which have taken place since the
early part of this year, particularly with regard to arrangements
within what is now the Museums, Libraries and Archives Partnership
(MLA).
As stated in our previous evidence, ACALG is
the professional body for the heads of local authority archives
services in England and Wales, and was a founding member of the
National Council on Archives. We do particularly welcome the Committee's
decision to conduct a second enquiry so speedily on heritage issues,
and also that it will be looking specifically at archives provision.
We feel that such an inquiry can only benefit the future of a
very important area of heritage (and information) provision which
has been overlooked in most quarters of government for too long.
We would maintain that virtually all new legislation and all government
operations should pay heed to ensuring the preservation of key
documentation for both future heritage purposes, but also for
more immediate informational needs. For example many of the recent
investigations on failures of public services such as social care
have identified poor record keeping as an important contributory
factor.
For the purposes of this inquiry, ACALG has
to proceed on the assumption that other, larger, organisations
will provide more detailed evidence on the overall national provision,
but we will be happy to provide further clarification on the particular
arrangements for local authority archives if that would be helpful
for the Committee. What we can say by way of introduction is that
the archive sector in England and Wales is very varied, ranging
from the National Archives at Kew, to tiny, one-person operations
in local government, universities or the private sector. As such
it might be expected that it would be difficult to make any generalisations
about it, but it can be stated with certainty that there is virtually
no part of the sector which is not under-resourced.
FUNDING
ACALG would particularly wish to highlight the
long term structural under-funding of local authority archive
services through out the UK. There is no statutory requirement
on local authorities in England and Wales to operate an archives
service as such, although there is a requirement under the 1972
Local Government Act to make "proper arrangements" which
has remained ill-defined despite the best efforts of the professional
organisations to press the various successive government departments
with responsibility for local government to define properly what
"proper arrangements" would be, and then to ensure that
these are achieved. The problem has been aggravated by the fact
that no single government department has responsibility for local
authority archives—with the Department for Constitutional
Affairs (as parent department for the National Archives and public
records and with responsibility for Information Policy), the DCMS
with its heritage role, and Dept for Communities and Local Government
(DCLR) all involved.
The result of the present arrangement is that
any authority can spend as much or as little as it chooses on
archive provision. Actual gross expenditure on services per head
varies from a high of £5.132 (Westminster) to £0.037
(Merseyside), although in the former case Westminster is also
covered by London Metropolitan Archives at no recharge, and in
the latter, each metropolitan authority is also funding some level
of service, but for which no data on expenditure is available.
Perhaps a more meaningful comparison is for English County Council
services which vary from £2.726 to £0.383. The result
generally is that in the competition for resources against other
services which are statutory, have stringent externally assessed
standards and can lever in significant levels of external funding
from other government programmes, archive services come very far
down the priorities of the local authorities.
We believe that this situation will only be
addressed by:
1. A clear recognition by government that
archive services are an essential part of the national memory
and heritage, and an irreplaceable information asset which can
play a unique role in improving the lives of the population. All
citizens have right to be able to access archives which will help
them understand the development of their lives and the society
in which they live.
2. That this is translated into policies
which will allow archives services to be "mainstreamed"
into information preservation and access provision and into economic
and community building initiatives. The difficulty of showing
the value of archive services specifically, but also culture and
heritage services generally, in the current Local Area Agreements
work is a good example of an area where such services could make
a real impact on outcomes, but where involvement is rendered very
difficult by the present policy structures.
3. New legislation which would place a statutory
duty on all local authorities to operate archive services, and
secondary frameworks which would set standards to be achieved.
Such frameworks need to be wide ranging enough to support the
steps necessary (as a matter of urgency) to ensure the preservation
of electronic records which will be lost for future generations
unless action is quickly taken. There is a real risk that history
will "stop" in the late 20th century for future generations
at the point where paper records peter out, unless radical action
is taken quickly, and serious investment is recognised as essential.
4. Recognition of the need to establish
a programme parallel to Renaissance in the Regions, which
would seek to redress the long term under-funding and also enable
the radical modernisation and capacity extension of archive services,
so that they could play the part they must to ensure that records
are preserved and accessible in the future for all sections of
the community. Education work (for all areas from primary school
to lifelong learners) is an area that many feel has been particularly
neglected, and there are many others, such as digital preservation,
film and sound archives, community and minority group archives
etc A modernised and more diverse workforce is essential to achieve
these ambitions.
5. A further step would be to recognise
the role played by the local authority sector in preserving the
records of central government. The most recent estimates suggest
that between 10-20% of all "public records", such as
hospital, prison, registers of shipping, Quarter Session and petty
session courts etc are held in local authority services at no
cost to central government, which does carry all other costs of
the National Archives (TNA) operation. However, we would not suggest
such a course of action, unless the funding to local government
was additional to the present TNA expenditure.
The only alternative we can see to the creation
of such a secure future funding framework created by the steps
outlined above would be a series of ad hoc measures which by definition
would be unreliable and subject to fluctuations. While the Heritage
Lottery Fund has been a very welcome source of funding for archives,
it cannot (by definition) fund core activities, and also in projects
of any size, requires matched funding which most local authority
services would struggle to secure from their parent body. Another
major problem when seeking project funds is that all virtually
all services, even the larger ones like some county record offices,
lack both the capacity and skills to prepare funding applications.
The result is a vicious circle of decline, at a time when public
demand, particularly in the form of remote requests by phone,
post and email and over the internet, continues to rise. It appears
to us that both DCMS and MLA have tended to view the archives
sector as being too slow to embrace the "bidding culture".
Our response is that they do not sufficiently appreciate the structural
weaknesses of the sector, which must be addressed to ensure that
the capacity is there to take advantage of the various project
funds. The publication of comparative figures in a written response
to a Parliamentary question earlier this year, revealed the massive
disparity between museums, libraries and archives in terms of
government support, and it must be remembered that this disparity
has a cumulative effect.
As we indicated above, there is virtually no
part of the archive sector which is not under resourced. ACALG
is particularly aware of the difficulties faced in resourcing
the operation of Film and Sound Archives, with the former in particular
being too specialist to be dealt with even by the larger local
authority offices. Within the public sector it is perhaps the
Higher Education sector which has fared least badly over recent
years, with evidence of expansion, but often this is associated
with a realisation of the need for good records management practices
for business reasons (such as Freedom of Information compliance)
rather than to preserve the historical archives of the institution.
Similarly in local government there has been a marked in crease
in the number of Records Management staff, but many of these (particularly
in district councils) lack any specialist training, and do not
link in to any part of the public archive sector provision.
Other organisations will doubtless comment on
the situation in the private and business archive sectors in more
detail, but ACALG shares their strong interest in ensuring that
these sectors are vigorous and healthy, and properly resourced.
Local Authority archives do house the overwhelming majority of
surviving records in both these categories—simply because
the offices have existed for a relatively long time and because
often there is no alternative home if the archives are to be preserved.
Large business collections in particular are often at serious
risk of being destroyed as many record offices do not have the
vacant space to house them. So we would support steps which would
make it more likely for larger business or organisations to resource
archive provision (either directly or indirectly). The suggestion
in the Goodison report that there might be corporation tax relief
for the care and conservation of business archives seems to us
sensible and appropriate, and we would support not only this,
but any other parallel proposals which might be developed.
While welcoming many of the recommendations
in the report by the MLA Archives Task Force Listening to the
Past, Speaking to the Future, ACALG members generally (in
common with many others in the archive community, including users)
felt that the report did not state strongly enough that major
investment in both buildings and services was required if the
sector was to play the role it potentially could in supporting
communities, learning and the economy. We feel that the situation
has, if anything, worsened since the publication of the report.
The bottom of the barrel is being "scraped" with staff
reductions in many authorities when public demand, especially
remote use, is continuing to rise. The risk of archive services
being ghettoised with its existing user base is very strong. Only
a strategic recognition of the importance of the sector by government
and its agencies, and a long term, sustained increase in resourcing
can make any radical change to the situation.
The committee also specifically asks about the
impact of Lottery Funding for the sector. It is regrettable that
a major redirection of Lottery Funds towards the Olympics seems
inevitable at a time when several fairly major lottery applications
from the archives community—mainly for building—are
emerging. The limited capacity of the sector has meant that the
gestation period of bids can be lengthy. ACALG is also particularly
concerned about the possible impact on regions outside London
and the South East, where there are less likely to be any benefits
for archives and other cultural services from Olympic related
funding streams.
ACQUISITION AND
DISPOSAL
The collections of archive services, whether
public sector or private, are built up through a long term organic
process, and unlike museums acquisition, usually relate to large
collections of records, rather than individual items, or a group
of individual items (such as a famous collection of paintings).
Most private archives held in public archive services remain the
property of the original owner ("the depositor") rather
than being purchased or gifted, as is the case with museums collections.
Few local authority archives have acquisition funds, and even
those who do have very limited resources. Because acquisition
can involve very large collections of records—such as all
the archives created by a borough or a family which has existed
since medieval times, or a business which has taken over numerous
other companies and operated world-wide—the greatest obstacle
to collecting is very often the lack of physical capacity to house
and process the records. Given the current aim to document all
sections of communities, not just the areas which have traditionally
been covered, this lack of capacity becomes patently the major
obstacle to effective acquisition of archives.
While purchase is not the major means by which
public archive collections are built up, it would be wrong not
to comment on the increasing market for archives. While the small
scale trading on E-Bay is an irritant, and has probably done damage
to the long established process by which many members of the public
have deposited items with their local record office, the more
obvious problems stem form the sale of larger collections. Some
of these may have been housed in public repositories for many
years, and maintained at public expense, until new owners (usually
by inheritance) decide that there must be financial advantage
to withdrawing them and offering them on the market. It must be
stressed that this is not a common occurrence, but few local authority
archives have acquisition funds, and even those who do have very
limited resources, and so major fund raising efforts have been
required. While these have generally been successful, it is another
reason for overstretch in the services involved. National funding
bodies and local Friends organisations have played major roles
in raising funds, but there are still many problems. We would
mention the practice of breaking up collections prior to sale,
which destroys much of the research value of the individual archives,
but also means that export licences are rarely required as few
items individually sell for above the present minimum figure.
Also many funders are unable to support the purchase of archives
less than 20 years old, or produced by living artists. The result
is the export overseas of, for example, the papers of living authors,
but also it makes it very difficult to secure the records of a
major business possibly going in to liquidation. In the age of
electronic records, when intervention is necessary at an early
stage in the life cycle to ensure the preservation and readability
of digital records, it is possible to see that future archive
may be lost due to this limitation on the operations of funding
bodies.
Although the acquisition of archives in traditional
formats will continue into the foreseeable future, acquisition
is increasingly becoming dependent on the ability to preserve
and make available digital content, without which it will be impossible
to document the activities not only of businesses, and organisations,
but also individuals. Even once the technical solutions have been
developed, the level of resources needed to operate the necessary
procedures will be substantial, and be a further factor in the
need to asses the existing fragmented archive network.
Disposal policies are perhaps less of an issue
for Record Offices, as the process of effective archive selection
by definition includes disposal, and it is an inherent part of
an archivist's activities to be as rigorous as possible to minimise
the quantity of material for permanent preservation, while ensuring
the survival of the correct information. As many of the private
records held in local authority offices remain in private ownership,
there is a risk of collections being withdrawn by owners with
the prospect of them being offered for sale and possible export.
While we would stress that this is comparatively rare, it does
occur frequently enough to cause concern, and to stretch both
the financial means and the working capacity of the offices involved
to run the generally successful fund raising campaigns. Between
the Heritage Lottery Fund and the other funding bodies and also
local fund raising, it has usually been possible to secure the
records, but there is an on-going risk that the market may expand,
while the resources available decreases (as might arise due to
the Olympics).
At a more strategic level, there is now a need
to be developing nationwide strategies to ensure the effective
preservation of archives. The financial constraints, but also
the availability of trained staff and appropriate buildings make
it essential that there is no inappropriate competition for records,
or the proliferation of new repositories whose collecting policies
conflict with those of existing offices. There are also still
some groups of records for which there is perhaps no logical home,
such as those of trans-national companies. National sectoral policies
should be developed, and it would probably be appropriate for
the National Archives to take a lead on this, as they already
starting top do.
REMIT AND
EFFECTIVENESS OF
DCMS, MLA COUNCIL ETC
In our submission to Protecting, preserving
and making available our nation's heritage, ACALG was critical
of much of DCMS and MLA thinking with regard to archives, and
we remain of this opinion. We remain convinced that archives need
to have a higher priority within government, and this must be
seen as a key role for DCMS. Although, as we mentioned above,
the issue is complicated by the split nature of archival responsibility
within government, with DCA being the Department with responsibility
for government records, we feel that much momentum has been lost
since the launch of the Archive Task Force report, and the failure
to provide any funding, however limited, towards achieving its
aims. It is difficult to envisage the situation if the original
Renaissance in the Regions report had elicited such a cool
response, but it probably would have been seen as an indication
of terminal ineffectiveness at both DCMS and the then emerging
Resource (now MLA).
DCMS appear to be very uncomfortable about archives
generally. This may be because they cannot truly understand the
dual nature of the sector, with its inseparable information and
heritage aspects. They do not appear to have similar confusion
with library services, with the important information role these
have, which may indicate that the split government responsibilities
do contribute to this. It may be that in the longer term, passing
clear responsibility to DCA, as the lead department for TNA might
address this, but it may equally cause other areas of confusion
to develop. However we feel the Committee should direct some consideration
to the long term strategic "home" of archives at governmental
level.
A similar confusion to that shown at DCMS was
seen clearly at MLA in its earlier years, when initial thinking
seemed focused exclusively on cross-sectoral developments. Unfortunately,
this was to be taken forward by an organisation with no knowledge
or understanding of one of the three sectors—archives. This
was due to the nature of the formation of Resource (as it then
was), and in time it became clear that some in-house archive expertise
was required, which was then recruited. A parallel situation developed
in the regional MLAs. The result was that, where sufficient funding
was available (which was not the case in all regions) some good
progress was made in developing the skills of sectoral employees,
and conducting interesting and innovative pilots. However, recent
funding settlements for the regions by MLA, and the restructuring
of both the regional bodies and MLA nationally, have resulted
in the loss of staff posts with sectoral knowledge and responsibility.
We see this as a backward step, which will be particularly to
the detriment of the archive sector, as there is no distinct on-going
funding stream to compare with Renaissance in the Regions or
Framework for the Future. We are aware that the funding
to MLA from DCMS has been very restricted and that the indications
for the next few years are particularly bleak, and we must urge
that DCMS must provide greater resources to MLA and its regional
bodies if they wish the agenda to be taken forward. It may be
that the funding restrictions are partly due to the 2012 Olympics,
in which case it seems particularly unfair that national programmes
are being reduced at the expense of schemes which will have limited
benefit for most areas of the country.
The other government agency most involved with
the archive sector is the National Archives (TNA). There were
some concerns that the merger of the Public Record Office and
the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 2003 to form TNA would
cause a reduction in the limited support for the private sector
which existed through HMC. However, the overall sectoral perception
now is that the merger has been beneficial, with TNA taking an
important role in establishing the post of the Business Records
Information Officer, and trying to improve links with all parts
of the sector, not simply those who have held public records.
The work of the TNA in developing self assessment tools for both
Records Management and Archive services is of great potential
benefit, particularly the possibility that archive self-assessment
may result in a process which could parallel Museum Accreditation
for all types of archive service, and also a potential performance
indicator for local authority archives within the Comprehensive
Performance Assessment Framework (or rather its successor). TNA
is also a critical support to the sector overall, through its
technical work on matters such as digital preservation, which
is beyond the capacity of even the largest local authority, university
or private sector archives. Their sharing of knowledge is critical
to future development of the sector, but still leaves unanswered
the question of how these developments could be resourced. One
area of disappointment in terms of recent developments at TNA
has been the decision not to pursue the possibility of introducing
new national archive legislation which would deal not only with
the public records of central government, but create a wider responsibility
on local government and other public bodies to provide archive
and records management services. The support of the sector for
such a step was virtually unanimous, but TNA now appears to be
pursuing a narrower legislative course which would relate only
to central government records and would not require primary legislation.
26 September 2006
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