Issue - meetings

The purpose of the report is to apprise the Panel of the work undertaken to date towards creating a Local History Centre for Bath and North East Somerset in line with best practice elsewhere.

The Chair noted that this item had been on the Panel’s workplan for some time.

The Head of Heritage Services presented the report. He informed the Panel that the South West Committee of the Heritage Lottery Fund would consider the Council’s bid for funding for the Archway Centre on 20 September and that the National Trustees would meet on the 26^th September, and would notify the outcome on the following afternoon.

He said that archives had been a “Cinderella” service for many years. They were founded in 1967 and were at first with the Chief Executive, then they were transferred to the Council Solicitor, then to Democratic Services and then to Libraries. In the course of a reorganisation some years ago he had volunteered to accept them in Heritage Services, which already employed professional archivists. Unfortunately new space had not been found to house them. They are lodged in the basement of the Guildhall and very much “out of sight, out of mind”. User surveys consistently show that users of the Bath archives have the highest satisfaction rates of any local authority archive users in the South West. Yet, as noted in the report, many other local authorities are ahead of Bath in implementing ambitious schemes to house their archives. Those other schemes give good examples of synergies and economies of space achieved by appropriately co-locating different facilities. He thought that the way forward for the Bath archives and local history centre was to find a larger project within which they could be based. He did not think that in the current financial climate a new standalone building would be provided. He was liaising with Councillor Anketell-Jones and the Regeneration Team about potential opportunities.

Councillor O’Brien suggested that the archive could be located in an old building, perhaps King Edward’s School. The Head of Heritage Services replied that the problem was that land values in central Bath were very high. Devon Archives were located on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Exeter, close to a park and ride and a junction on the M5. He would certainly not rule out moving outside of the city centre.

Councillor Horstmann asked whether the Royal Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases had been considered as a possible location. The Head of Heritage Services said that it had crossed his mind. At present it belonged to the NHS Trust, but they were seeking to dispose of it. It did have a lot of open space inside it. He was conscious that other parties were taking an interest in the building; a number of things might be able to come together there.