Decision details

The report introduces the annual update of the Heritage Services 5-year business plan.

RESOLVED (unanimously) that the Cabinet agreed to:

2.1  Approve the Heritage Services Business Plan 2020-2025;

2.2  Confirm that it wishes Heritage Services to continue to work to the business principles agreed by the Council Executive in 2004, as amended;

2.3  Confirm that it wishes to relocate the Fashion Museum with a supporting Collections Centre subject to a satisfactory business case being prepared.

The report introduces the Heritage Services business plan update (‘the Plan’) for the five-year period 2020/21 to 2024/25. It sets out the business unit’s strategy for delivering savings targets and increasing its financial return to the Council on an ongoing and sustainable basis. The Plan includes strategies for addressing the Climate Emergency as well as for pricing, marketing and investment in conservation, staff development and the quality of the visitor experience to achieve the ambitious targets set out in it, and an analysis of the risk involved.

The process of revising and updating the Business Plan has involved consideration of a number of different pricing, marketing and investment options. The financial and business effects of these options were modelled and evaluated. The business strategy in the Plan attached recommends a coherent and integrated series of decisions that are most likely to enable the Service to meet the targets required of it by the Financial Plan and sustain this level of performance in future years.

Another option would be for Heritage Services to cease functioning along the business lines of the past thirteen years and return to being a conventional local authority museums and archives service. The absence of investment would lead to a loss of focus and competitiveness and result in falling revenues to the Council. This course of action is not recommended.