Memorandum submitted by Lancashire County
Council
I am writing to the Committee on behalf of Lancashire
County Council to submit the authority's views on the matters
to be considered as part of this inquiry.
Lancashire County Council is a major provider
of both Museums and Archive services, with 12 museums located
across the County, and operates one of the largest archive services
in the UK from Lancashire Record Office in Preston. This office
also provides the archive service to the unitary authorities of
Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen. Gross revenue budget for
the Record Office (including records management services) for
2006-07 is estimated at £1.705 million (net £1.125 million)
and £3.2 million (net £1.67 million) for the Museum
Service. The Museum Service operates a total of 12 sites, several
of which are operated on behalf of District Councils. The Textile
Industry collections are Designated as of National significance.
These include the working textile mills of Helmshore in Rossendale
and Queen St Mill in Burnley.
Both services, along with Library and Information
Service and the Arts Unit, form part of the Adult and Community
Services Directorate, following a re-structuring in April 2005.
FUNDING
Lancashire CC, along with many other local authorities,
has made great efforts over the years to provide sufficient funding
for services which we see as contributing to the quality of life
of our citizens, creating pride in local communities and providing
major opportunities for both economic development (through tourism
and other initiatives) and educational and learning initiatives.
We also recognise that it is difficult to sustain the necessary
levels of funding from existing revenue streams, in the face of
many competing demands often from services where a statutory obligation
to provide services to a specified level exists.
We would naturally welcome any new sources of
finding which might become available to assist in the provision
and development of museums and archive services. Both our services
have benefited from external funding sources in the past, which
have allowed building, collection development and outreach work
which would otherwise not have been possible, but we remain very
conscious of how much remains to be done. There are fundamental
questions as to whether it is realistically possible to address
the task through project finding alone. For example, Lancashire
Record Office, for example, has a cataloguing backlog of 37% of
its total holdings of about 1,770m3 (which equates to approximately
13 kilometres as a linear measurement). A recent study LOGJAM:
an audit of un-catalogued collections in the North West. NW
Museums, Libraries and Archives Councils.2004) suggests that cataloguing
this backlog would take at least 145 years of archivists time,
with a further 25 years of paraprofessional staff. This makes
no provision for the conservation work which would also be needed
on many thousands of the items. Designation Challenge Funding
has allowed some 15,000 items from the Museums collections to
be catalogued in the last two years. Yet the total holdings are
in the region of 200,000 items altogether.
Doubtless the future pattern should be a balance
of project funding and secure and realistic revenue budgets. While
project funding can address development and backlog needs, it
must not be forgotten that services such as Museums and Archives
are in daily use by the public both in person and remotely, and
that to be able to meet this, there has to be adequate on-going
funding.
As an authority, Lancashire aims to provide
all its services, including Museums and Archives in a cost effective
manner. The Record Office, for example, although one of the largest
in England, is in the lowest third of county services for expenditure
per head (£1.106 gross. £0.772 net; CIPFA Archive
Service Statistics: Archives Estimates 2005-06). The Museums
Service costs almost half the cost of Hampshire and a quarter
of Tyne and Wear per head. We are aware of the benefits that would
arise in building and supporting our communities, improving educational
standards and support an improvement in the quality in life of
the people of the county if we were to invest further in these
services, but feel that it is difficult to do so without clearer
indication of an acceptance in government policy that these services
can support these developments. The recognition by David Lammy
earlier this year that the present guidance on Local Area Agreements
did not make it easy for museums libraries and archives to contribute
to this agenda is an example in point. Additional funding, either
from new or existing sources will only possible if it fits within
the governments priorities, and we feel the important potential
for cultural services, particularly those within local authorities,
needs to be made more forcibly by government departments in the
funding allocation process.
For future archives, we also feel that there
needs to be recognition of the need for local authorities to development
the capacity to manage and preserve the electronic records they
themselves are already creating, but also those which will need
to be preserved from the businesses, organisations, communities
and individuals in their areas. There has been little recognition
of the impact of this, or of the resource implications of following
through the impacts of broader community engagement advocated
by government. The difficulty of gaining flexibility on funding
sources has made it difficult, for example, for archive services
to access any finding from DfES towards the better use and availability
of archive sources in schools, where there was real potential
for such activity to help improve standards and pupil engagement.
We welcome recent initiatives to encourage schools
to do more work out of classrooms and visit Museums etc Our museums
attract c.24,000 pupils on organised school visits per annum.
We would point to continuing anxieties over Health and Safety
requirements as artificial barriers to this use. We are making
innovative use of video-conferencing to serve schools in rural
communities and see this as an area where significant expansion
of services is possible with comparatively small additional resources.
It is also disappointing to see that the establishment
of the Regional Museums, Libraries and Archive Councils has not
resulted in the availability of funding for service development,
other than in a few pilot cases, and where Renaissance in the
Regions funding has been available. Indeed on average the funding
for Museums has been less per year than during the period of the
former Area Museums Council.
From a library point of view, we would express
concern that the last round of PFI was greatly affected by the
Olympics decision. The DCMS had said the round of bidding would
focus among other things on City Centre libraries, yet only one
city benefited from a new scheme. However DCMS could argue that
giving additional PFI credits to schemes already under way at
Newcastle and Liverpool would fit their criteria. There is a Big
Lottery Fund of £80 million for Community Libraries available
later this year, and it is to be hoped that it will be possible
to access this effectively and harness to support services to
communities.
ACQUISITION AND
DISPOSAL
With regard to archives, our main concerns are:
1. The increasing market which is developing
for archive material, which we are concerned could lead to some
important materials passing out of the public domain, if not the
country.
2. The lack of capacity to accommodate and
preserve collections not yet in the public domain. Lancashire
Record Office currently has, for example, some vacant archive
storage, but no more than for another three to five years at current
rates of accession, assuming no major collections have to be accepted
at short notice. Other offices are in an even more difficult position.
Capital project for all cultural services are difficult, but the
possibility of Heritage Lottery Fund support is a great advantage.
However, we would highlight the need to be able to accommodate
the long term revenue implications of such developments within
local authority budgets.
With regard to Museums, our main concerns are:
1. The pressure on Acquisition budgets. LCC
is one of the few local authorities that actively purchases works
of art. Our £10k per annum budget on average levers out a
further 90% from external sources such as the V&A Purchase
Fund, The Art Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund. However, it
is increasingly hard to retain even that small amount.
2. The lack of curatorial capacity to research
and make available the collections already held in trust. The
trend in recent years to measure the performance of "front
of house" activities has led to a shift in staff resources
away from essential curatorial work. In turn this has led to a
lack of specialist skills and the inability to reward academic
specialisms within a local government pay structure.
3. Similarly to archives, the long-term revenue
implications of caring for collections are giving concern.
LCC has just funded the creation of new Museum
Conservation workshops in Preston at a net cost of £1.4 million.
This gives the Service long term capacity to care for its collections
and make this "behind the scenes" activity accessible
to the public. However, the long-term cost of maintaining the
specialist conservation team is only possible by "trading"
in these services. The Lancashire Conservation Studios has provides
commercial conservation services including training to over 30
museums including the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester
and the National Football Museum in Preston. A recent study on
conservation needs by MLA NW and the NW Hub has identified the
Lancashire Studios as a key deliverer of services to the North
West.
THE REMIT
AND EFFECTIVENESS
OF DCMS, MLA ETC
From the viewpoint of local authority cultural
services, our concerns centre on the weakness of DCMS as the relevant
government department in making the case for the relevance and
importance of local authority services. Archives in particular
seem to have suffered most in this respect. This weakness is then
reflected at both regional level and in the activities of the
Museums, Libraries and Archives Partnership, (as it now is). This
latter body has received much criticism, but is perhaps fair to
ask how it was meant to have carried out its role with the extremely
limited funding at its disposal. We understand that it is now
probable that its funding will be further reduced in future years,
which is bound to raise questions about the viability of the organisation,
and of its regional partners. Already the capacity of these regional
bodies is being called in to question, particularly with regard
to their knowledge and capacity to make realistic assessments
of museums, libraries and archive services in the proposed regional
commentaries. As advocates for their sector, the MLA bodies so
far seem to be making limited headway in engaging with Regional
development agencies, Learning and Skills Councils and other such
bodies who have funds at their disposal. Where positive links
are being developed it tends to be at a local service level, such
as the grant awarded by the North West Development Agency to Lancashire
Museums Service to develop a new regional conservation facility
in Preston.
Other government agencies are also of relevance,
and we welcome the active role being played by the National Archives
in providing technical support on matters such as Records Management,
community archives, retro-conversion programmes and digital preservation,
at time taking on the role of project leader in schemes where
there have been real, practical service improvements for users,
such as the National Access to Archives project. However, the
National Archives is not in a position to continue to commit resources
to external programmes unless others can also contribute, as we
can see with the delays in trying to move to the next stages of
the development of a national archive portal. (AUK project.)
From our perspective as a local authority providing
an archive service, the lack of clear government policy and development
thinking must be at least partly due to the contrasting policy
contexts in which DCMS and the National Archives (through its
parent department DCA) are operating. The recent concordat between
TNA and MLA is to be welcomed, but it further progress at government
policy level, also drawing in the Department for Communities and
Local Government, which is essential to allow archive and museums
services to thrive.
It should also be noted that Museums hold significant
biological and scientific collections. They have an important
role to play in the preservation of material evidence relating
to bio-diversity and the educational aspects of sustainability.
For example Fleetwood Museum regularly hosts events related to
Marine Conservation in Morecambe Bay and our geological material
is currently featuring in an exhibition aimed primarily at schools.
DCMS and MLA seem woefully equipped to tackle science in museums
and to promote this wider agenda across government departments.
A final point relates to the welcome Government
initiative to remove admission charges from National Museums.
This creates expectation in local communities that their museums
should be free—something that current budget constraints
do not permit. This policy has created an uneven playing field
with some evidence that non-charging museums in Preston, Manchester
and Liverpool are "poaching" visitors and school groups
from charging local authority museums in Lancashire and similar
areas. However, DCMS seems unwilling to measure this impact. DCMS
funded museums do not have a mechanism for sharing information
that would confirm or rebut this observation.
27 September 2006
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