Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Future Archive Provision

Background

Buckinghamshire County Council and Milton Keynes Council through the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies and Milton Keynes Heritage Unit respectively are working together to develop proposals for the future of archive services across Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes has expressed a desire, since becoming a unitary authority in 1997, to be able to provide local access to its collections.  With the growth of the area in recent years and continuing in the future, that desire has become more pressing.  The Heritage Unit of Milton Keynes Council has undertaken research that supports this idea of a general aim amongst the people of Milton Keynes to have their collections accessible.

Alongside this, the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies has continued to undertake its legal obligations to national bodies, and was visited by The National Archives Inspection Team in 2007.  This visit, undertaken every five years, and reviewed by annual self-assessment is part of the regime that allows CBS to hold public records on behalf of the Lord Chancellor (under the Public Records Acts of 1958 and 1962).  The 2007 visit highlighted several issues, which CBS has to work to resolve in the period up to 2012.  These issues included increased staffing in order to work to lessen the backlog of catalogued material made available to the public; improved storage accommodation for the collections; and new accrual space to continue adding new material into the collections.

Under its short-term planning processes, Buckinghamshire County Council has been able to provide some small amounts of funding in order to increase the levels of staffing in the Centre, which in turn has allowed staff to work on reducing backlogs.  However, issues to do with accommodation for the collections require more thought and investment.

Where do we go from here?

With the aim of improving access to collections, plus the key goal of preserving those collections for future generations, we are working together to investigate the best option for continued and enhanced archive provision for the two areas.  We have created a new joint website with images of both areas and information.  However, most importantly, we want to hear from you.

Your views on this process are important and we’d like your opinion.  We have created a survey to start off the work and we’d be very grateful if you could spare a few minutes to complete this for us.

As the work on the joint project continues, we will update the website and add new details, so keep checking back!