County council proposes running limited services at The Keep
Services at Sussex’s flagship archives centre will be cut under a proposed ‘core offer’.
The offer was presented at a cabinet meeting of East Sussex County Council on 13 November and outlines the “minimum outcomes” of services the council could be expected to provide by 2020–2021 to help meet a £46 million funding gap in the next three years.
It describes a reduction in service levels for many council functions. Regarding The Keep, the council states that it will “manage the records which we are required to keep by law” and “meet our basic statutory duties as a Place of Deposit for public records” with “a basic level of public access to those records”.
However, it warns that The Keep will not provide “the same level of support” to customers online or in person, and will not be able to provide educational outreach.
The £19 million Keep facility, located in Brighton, opened to the public in 2013 and brought together the collections of the former East Sussex Record Office and holdings belonging to Brighton & Hove City Council and the University of Sussex.
Its notable collections include the Mass Observation Archive, a major anthropological research project that recorded the lives of ordinary people from 1937 to the early 1950s.
The council is not seeking agreement to reduce services to the level set out in the offer, but will use the offer to help it lobby central Government to set out a realistic level of funding.
The cabinet papers also note that the core offer “is not the ideal that we would wish to be able to provide but seeks to capture what is most appropriate and possible in a time of austerity”, and that it would still leave the council facing a deficit of £33.4 million.
Councillor Keith Glazier, leader of the county council, called the core offer “an ambitious but realistic plan to help us continue to deliver quality, value-for-money services”.
A public consultation on the core offer will run until 26 December. To take part, visit consultation.eastsussex.gov.uk/governance-andcommunity-services/a-core-offer-for-east-sussex.