Memorandum submitted by Warwickshire County
Council
SUMMARY OF
MAIN POINTS
— We welcome the Committee's decision
to undertake this enquiry, and particularly its specific focus
on the role of stewardship.
— We very much hope that the results
of this consultation exercise will complete and complement the
feedback given under the previous enquiry on Protecting, Preserving
and Making Available our Nation's Heritage which focused on built
heritage and archaeology.
— In relation to both archives and
museums, we wish to highlight the importance of ensuring that
development of collections through acquisition and retention continues,
so that collections do not become sterile or frozen in time.
— It is important to recognise not
only the heritage importance of ensuring the long-term preservation
of archives, but also the preservation of key documentation (including
digital archives) for more immediate practical needs in order
to facilitate information retrieval within today's society in
general. This has both legislative and funding implications.
— The funding position for collection-based
services is extremely problematic in the context of local authority
priorities at present. There is pressure to divert funding from
core collection care activity into "quick win" mainstream
activities. This situation is extremely unhealthy for the long-term
preservation of irreplaceable heritage and information based collections.
— The existing performance frameworks
do not address collections care issues, making it difficult in
a local authority context to lobby successfully for funding to
support work in this area.
INTRODUCTION TO
OUR SERVICES
Warwickshire County Council
Warwickshire County Council serves a population
of 533,900 and provides collections-related services through its
Library and Information, Museum and Archive services. These services,
together with Adult and Community Learning, are managed by the
Head of Libraries, Learning and Culture within the Strategic Directorate
of Adult, Health and Community Services.
Library and Information Services
The Library & Information Service has significant
special collections, notably the George Eliot collection which
has national significance. It also houses a number of local studies
collections.
Warwickshire Museum Service
The Warwickshire Museum Service has developed
from the collections of the Warwick Natural History and Archaeological
Society, who founded their Museum in 1836. Warwickshire County
Council became, we believe, the first County Council to provide
a Museum Service when WCC assumed responsibility for the service
in 1932. Our Collections cover the archaeology, geology, natural
and social history of the county of Warwickshire.
Warwickshire County Record Office
Warwickshire County Record Office was established
in the 1930s, and is the official record repository for Warwickshire
County Council. It is an approved place of deposit for public
records, and diocesan record office for Warwickshire parishes
within the dioceses of Coventry and Birmingham. Collections date
back to the 12th century, and comprise the typical county record
office range (records of local authorities, both current and superseded),
courts, churches, businesses, schools, landed families, solicitors,
local institutions and individuals, etc.) Records comprise traditional
formats such as paper, parchment and photographic, plus some audio-visual
holdings.
Access to Collections
Library services are provided through 32 fixed
library sites, five mobile libraries and a housebound reader service.
Access to Museum Collections is provided through two museums run
solely by Warwickshire County Council, a partnership venture "Roman
Alcester" and through travelling exhibitions, loans to other
organisations, and events. The County Record Office is based in
Warwick itself, and provides access to certain popular record
sources throughout the county through developing surrogate collections
in libraries.
Further access to heritage (Museum and Archive)
collections is provided through WCC and partnership websites:
www.warwickshire.gov.uk/museum
www.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk
www.romanalcestercatalogue.org.uk
www.warwickshire.gov.uk/countyrecordoffice
www.warwickshire.gov.uk/archivesunlocked
www.a2a.org.uk
www.warwickshire.gov.uk/libraries
2. Funding, with particular reference to the
adequacy of the budget for museums, galleries and archives, and
the impact of the London 2012 Olympics on Lottery funding for
their sector
FUNDING
The Committee will be well aware that there
is no statutory requirement on local authorities at any level
in England and Wales to operate either museum or archives services
as such, although there are obligations best fulfilled by doing
so, such as the requirement in the 1972 Local Government Act for
"proper arrangements" for record keeping. Neither is
there any rigorous external standard for the scale and nature
of provision. This situation is further complicated for archives
in that no single government department has responsibility for
local authority archives. In two-tier authorities such as Warwickshire,
Museums are a discretionary function at both District and County
level, and this function is exercised by some but not all of the
Districts as well as by the County. Archives are operated at county-level,
although in Warwickshire, the existence of the Shakespeare Birthplace
Trust Record Office leads to a sharing of responsibility for some
classes of local record for Stratford-upon-Avon. The result of
this variable background is an uneven mosaic of service provision
across the sub-region, with great variety in the level of investment
made. All cultural services are inevitably vulnerable at times
of financial stringency; discretionary ones inevitably more so.
This leads not only to fragile services, but to instability, difficulty
in long term planning, and over-reliance on challenge funding.
Recent emphasis on developing the popularisation
of archives by demonstrating their huge potential as a resource
for lifelong learning and outreach has been welcome in many respects.
However, the implications of this at local level (where sustained
increases to revenue funding are a virtual impossibility), are
often that resources allocated to caring for collections (surveying
archives in the community, cataloguing, indexing and creating
finding-aids, conservation and preservation) have of necessity
been diverted into outreach and learning programmes. Archive services
are under pressure to reach new audiences, and sincerely wish
to do so, but it is unacceptable that this development should
be made at the expense of core collection care activity. To continue
to do so will ultimately have a negative impact on the very agenda
to which archive services are attempting to contribute, as users
will be unable to learn from, use and enjoy archive material if
resources are not there to save it, identify it, catalogue it
and preserve it in the first place. This problem is further compounded
by the decline in opportunities to bid for external funding for
projects which focus heavily on collection care, in favour of
the more outward facing agendas.
Over recent years some cultural services have
achieved higher profile through the framework of Best Value Performance
Indicators, CPA, etc. The visibility which this provides for cultural
services in a local authority context is welcome and helpful;
however this is tempered by the inadequacy of the rather crude
indicators, which by their very nature (with the exception of
Museum Registration/Accreditation) focus on that which can easily
be counted, rather than that which really counts. There is very
little recognition of Collections Care (which underpins every
aspect of Museum and Archive services). This situation is aggravated
in the current Local Area Agreement framework, where a real impact
on outcomes could be made, but the structures make it challenging
to embed cultural services with meaningful outcomes. The performance
framework does, of course, have a major influence on allocation
of resources within the local authority—investment will
be more likely in areas addressed by CPA and the like.
The investment by DCMS via Renaissance in the
Regions (RiR) is very welcome in principle. However, inevitably
its primary benefits are for those within the Hub. The West Midlands,
which is a Phase I Hub, has within its Business Plan several work
packages which provide significant regional benefits, and Warwickshire
County Council is a partner in projects supporting Museum Development
Officers (providing advice and support to smaller independent
and voluntary museums) and mobile museum provision across the
region. However, RiR does not address the long term underfunding
of rural County Museum Services in the region, nor the parallel
needs in Archives for investment, modernisation, support for community
work and increased educational work.
To date, RiR investment has been via two year
Business Plans. Although regional consultation has been undertaken,
the short timescales, and the stop-start nature of a two year
programme, has significantly reduced benefit, and impacts on sustainability.
A longer Business Planning cycle would yield tangible benefits
and improve Value for Money.
The capacity and resources to conserve, protect
and promote library collections are limited. We would welcome
a clear steer on best practice and standards around special collections
in libraries. The particular role of hard copy newspaper storage
needs to be redefined within available resource and expectations,
particularly in the light of digitisation.
We suggest that collections-based services need
to be recognised as a mainstream component of local government,
with a unique part to play in improving people's quality of life
and understanding of society and environment; that all citizens
should be entitled to a basic level of cultural provision, specifically
in those services which provide community memory, and the heritage
of future generations, and that this should be recognised.
Over the last decade there has been a substantial
increase in the challenge funds available to bid for, and Warwickshire
has benefited significantly from HLF, NoF, etc. However challenge
funding brings its own problems of non-sustainability, capacity
to write and implement bids, availability of match funding etc,
and again is no solution to systemic under-funding. Reliance on
external funding sources can lead to a "stop-start",
"jerky" pattern of service development, rather than
smooth and incremental improvement. For all these reasons—and
the need for consultation—bids can be a long time in preparation.
It is therefore regrettable that less funding is likely to be
available as the experience and expertise on how to bid for really
worthwhile projects is reaching maturity.
There is an urgent need to identify resources
to address the preservation of electronic records at local level
which will be lost for future generations unless action is taken
quickly.
3. Acquisition and disposal policies with
particular reference to due diligence obligations on acquisition
and legal restrictions on disposal of objects
Warwickshire Museum Service and Warwickshire
County Record Office operate under the terms of formal Acquisition
and Disposal policies; these are regularly reviewed and approved
by WCC as governing body.
The majority of the collections of the Museum
Service have been, and continue to be, acquired through donation.
It is therefore important that the interests and rights of donors
are respected, and that Disposal Policies, in particular, give
potential donors confidence that their donations are and will
continue to be held in trust for public benefit. Where acquisition
is by purchase, we usually rely on assistance from one or more
grant-giving body—through successive pressures, acquisition
budgets have fallen by the wayside.
As a regular part of collections review within
the museum service, disposal is considered and carried out, and
we consider that overall the current disposal regime for local
authorities provides a reasonable approach, allowing practical
review, whilst still, importantly, protecting collections. However,
we are concerned that restrictions on acquisition—both the
initial cost and the ongoing commitment—create the risk
that our collections will no longer develop as they should.
Within the County Record Office, a great many
collections are held on long-term loan, with title remaining with
the original depositor or their heirs. While this is helpful in
encouraging the deposit of irreplaceable archive material in a
suitably equipped and staffed repository, thereby ensuring the
long-term preservation of important collections, the record office
will encounter problems if/when owners decide to sell a collection.
The need to safeguard the collection for the county is naturally
of paramount concern, but the effort required to fund-raise, bid
for external grant funding and develop, resource and implement
an access enhancement plan is intense, and will dominate service-planning
for a period of several years. It is probably also worth mentioning
the difficulties inherent in securing a match funding contribution
from your local authority in order to purchase a collection which
has been on deposit with that same local authority for a considerable
period of time, simply to maintain the status quo with regard
to its access arrangements. The possible reduction in availability
of grant funds as a consequence of big initiatives such as the
Olympics is of real concern in this respect.
Warwickshire County Record Office has been able
to make no headway whatsoever in preparing to accession digital
archives, due to capacity and financial constraints. Should this
situation continue, there will be a serious gap in the record-keeping
continuum at the point that paper records are superseded by electronic;
the raw materials of history will simply not have been preserved.
4. The remit and effectiveness of DCMS, the
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and other relevant organisations
in representing cultural interests inside and outside Government.
Cultural services contribute to the agenda of
several government departments. This should be a strength, but
risks being a weakness if there is no single strong advocate.
This is of particular concern for archives, where responsibility
itself is shared between different departments.
Within WCC, Libraries, Museums and Archives
work ever closer together, and we are conscious that we contribute
to almost every strategic objective of the Council—but sometimes
struggle for recognition of this. "Mainstreaming" culture
is therefore a primary objective.
As sectoral lead, DCMS and MLA need to be fighting
the corner for culture more vocally, and more concertedly. The
appearance of cultural services in CPA is welcome, but the measures
remain primitive. As a priority, it is crucial that MLA continues
to engage and develop the standard-setting agenda, so that even
if the statutory basis of our services cannot be strengthened,
the framework of external standards against which it is measured
is. We aspire to a standard of cultural entitlement—with
the development of measures for the access to culture which all
schoolchildren and citizens deserve. DCMS and MLA should be working
to ensure that whatever framework replaces LAAs better represents
this aspect than does the current framework.
October 2006
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