Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Adults and Communities which provided an update on developments and sought the views of the Committee on options relating to the Archives, Collections and Learning (ACL) Centre. A copy of the report marked ‘Agenda Item 11’ is filed with these minutes.

Arising from discussion the following points were made:

       i.          Members expressed disappointment that the original proposal to build the ACL Centre would no longer proceed due to the County Council’s challenging financial position and current budget gap.  Members queried if, as an alternative, other parts of County Hall could be utilised through the Ways of Working Programme, or if non-performing assets could be sold to fund the new centre.

      ii.          Members noted that the current capital value of the Record Office in Wigston was around £950,000.  However, the cost of maintenance works required to be undertaken to the building was estimated to be just over £1.7million.  This was based on a recent assessment of the condition of the building and covered works necessary to the heating and ventilation systems, windows, floor loading and access to the building.  These works were essential and needed to take place over the next one to three years. Members commented with concern that investing in such maintenance works would cost the Authority more than the building was worth, noting that strong rooms were expensive and not very practical for other types of use, and so would not increase the value of the site.

    iii.          Members noted a new archive could not be built in stages, but had to be built as one unit, and with the cost of building this part of the centre would be £20million of a £30million total cost estimate, none of the partners had the capital necessary to progress this further. The remaining £10million was for a museum store, the cost of which would be met by the County Council.

    iv.          Members queried if the County Council was coming close to losing its accreditation, and if it did, what the anticipated cost to the Council would be. The Director responded that the cost to the Council was not known. Useful, open discussions had been held with The National Archives (TNA), and they had been appreciative of the honesty around the challenges faced by the partners. However, their principal concern was the care of the public record, with maintenance of the building being one issue. Another problem in terms of accreditation was no expansion space and records in non-compliant storage which would not be addressed even if the £1.7million was invested in the current site. Members noted there was a possible risk would be that TNA could make provision to ensure records were kept in compliant storage and recharge the costs of doing so.

     v.          Work was ongoing to look at the procurement of external archive compliant storage which would meet accreditation requirements, as well as investment into the existing building. However, whilst there would be access to collections for statutory purposes such as subject access requests, there would be a challenge with provision of public access to collections if stored elsewhere.

    vi.          Members asked if records could be split and those belonging to Leicester City and Rutland returned in order to free up space for the records for Leicestershire. The Director reported the LLR partnership had been in place since before Local Authority Reorganisation in 1997, and many records pertained to the whole area, such as, diocesan records and regimental records which could not be separated. It therefore made sense to continue to have a LLR records office. Furthermore, this would be a big piece of work to go through all the records which were substantial. It would also have a large revenue implication, including the running of three records offices. This option had therefore been identified as not desirable for any of the partners involved.

  vii.          In response to a query from Members, the Director reported that the LLR partnership agreement was a historic document, based on revenue contribution and covered all of the revenue costs associated with the running of the records office, including staff. However, the agreement did not include for capital development. However, such costs would be split in line with the same formula as was applied to revenue contributions.

 viii.          The contribution towards the £1.7million maintenance investment to update the records office would be 55% by the County Council, 35% by the City Council and 10% by Rutland Council. The same would be expected for contributions from partners for the new archive centre if that went ahead.

    ix.          Members raised concerns that by not proceeding with the new ACL Centre the Council would be at risk in the longer term of incurring greater costs, including the added cost to hire specialist storage elsewhere which was non-returnable money, as well as risking losing its accreditation. 

     x.          Members commented that there was not enough detail contained in the report which addressed the issues now raised and therefore did not allow them to reach a fully informed view regarding the options now presented.  It was suggested that the solutions put forward did not appear to solve either the current or long-term problems faced, in particular with regard to the records office and the Council’s future accreditation. It was suggested that holding a separate workshop to consider this in more detail would be helpful and members requested that the Director organise this in advance of its next meeting.  The outcome of the workshop to be presented for further consideration to the next meeting of the Committee.

    xi.          Members asked that future reports address separately archive collections held by the Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (ROLLR), and those that related to the County Council only, for example, museum collections.

RESOLVED:

a)    That the report on the Update on the Archives, Collection and Learning (ACL) Centre be noted.

b)    That an Adults and Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee workshop be held to consider in more depth the Archives, Collection and Learning Centre and future delivery options as set out in the report, the outcome of which to be reported to the Committee in June.