Dear colleagues,

After the initial list serve response to the MLA announcement of the restructuring, Archives NRA has been rather quiet on the subject. Perhaps this reflects the nature of that press release – sweeping but lacking in detail

MLA has been faced with a difficult financial environment, not helped by the assumption by DCMS that ring-fenced funding for museums takes precedence and that cuts will fall on other programmes. Libraries have dedicated funding. Archives have none. DCMS officials have consistently refused to recognise the value of our sector, and MLA appears to have accepted this argument, in implementing the cuts and changing its programme capacity. However in the process the MLA appears to have removed the regional agencies, but left itself with a board with a significant element of representatives from those very regions. Not to mention the very large pension fund issue which will now transfer from the abolished regions after 31 March 2009 – the very issue which scuppered the creation of a single agency in the run up to the creation of the present partnership. Perhaps this won’t matter as the MLA is likely to head for the bonfire of the quangos once Margaret Hodge’s review comes to fruition.

What is this likely to mean?  For the regions outside London it signals the removal of all but a token MLA presence. London, with the mayoral stake on the choice of a board member survives as an agency, but the budget cuts also bite deep into its staffing and programme.  Considerable expertise will be lost, and the agencies likely to house the remaining posts have shown little interest in the museums, libraries or archives in the past.

For all regions the process will see the obliteration of domain specific posts for those regions that have retained them. Work had already been restricted to local government – but future programme work will exclude anything on collections – work which is still needed to help us power outreach and support for those wider government agendas. Will the three to four posts remaining for the regions have any time or opportunity for working with anyone except the designated regional museums?

Presumably existing programme work will continue within the limits of funding, but once these round have finished, what is on offer for archives? Nothing for those organisations outside the local government sector, and very little that addresses the needs of the archive sector – as opposed to a government vision of what archives should be harnessed to serve. Of course there will be the Olympics and the People’s Record – but MLA has yet to make the case to the regions outside London that it is about activity outside the capital. And there may be opportunities to bid for government funding for community archives – but from government programmes that will require a very hard sell from the MLA. And how will working with communities fit with the local government agenda? Not all communities are geographically based, or committed to working with local government, and the pot from which bids are to be made is likely are heavily oversubscribed.

 In this new climate can the MLA continue to justify the ‘A’ in its title?

In essence it seems as if the archive sector is returning to the position before the National Council on Archives took on the mantle of organising regional archive councils as a precursor to the formation of regional agencies. RACs and successor bodies survive in some regions, and although in the main they have no independent funding stream, they may be needed as the only realistic regional focus we are likely to have.

Does all this strategic stuff matter to archives in England? Do we care?  Well if you do why not add your contribution to an NRA debate, which may help relevant archival bodies make a case. However there may be a question of who should voice our concerns. It may be difficult for the NCA to do so directly, as their funding is jointly agreed between MLA and TNA. So is this one for the Society of Archivists?  If so I would urge Council to make representations directly to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and perhaps to use the developing band of MPs cultivated by NCA to ensure that the profession gets a response, and not a brush off meeting with the very officials who have consistently rejected the value of the archive domain in the past.

Over to you,

David Mander – in a personal capacity