Decision details

RESOLVED (unanimously) that the Cabinet agreed to:

1)  Approve the Heritage Services Business Plan 2021-2026;

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

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 2021/22 to 2025/26. It sets out the business unit’s early strategy for stabilising following the effects of the Covid pandemic and rebuilding visitor numbers and financial performance on a sustainable basis, whilst maintaining the high standards of visitor experience, conservation and presentation that are the bedrock of commercial success.

It is recognised that the outlook for the visitor economy remains uncertain; the assumptions upon which the Plan is built have greater degrees of uncertainty in the outer years. Future annual revisions and updates to the plan will build on and revise these assumptions, as the visitor economy recovers.

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, 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 recover its level of performance by 2024/25.

Another option would be for Heritage Services to cease functioning along the business lines of the past fourteen 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.