Wandsworth Museum Campaign Group Bulletin #7
The public gallery was crowded to overflowing at the meeting of the Environment & Leisure Oversight and Scrutiny Committee (ELOSC) at the Town Hall on 2nd July. The Committee considered and approved proposals for:• the closure of the Museum at the end of 2007 and its relocation from the Courthouse in Garratt Lane to the library part of West Hill• the closure of the library at West Hill in November 2007 and its move to the Courthouse where it would be amalgamated with Alvering Library which would also be closed• the closure of the Local History Service and its replacement with a Heritage Service.Closure & Relocation of the MuseumThe consultants appointed by the Council presented their draft business plan for the relocation of the Museum to West Hill. It was evident that the plan had been prepared within a very tight timescale of just three weeks and against a limited remit. Many of the costings were qualified as rough estimates or subject to confirmation. The draft business plan makes clear that a minimum of £600,000 from the initial £1.0m offered by the Hintze Foundation will be used up in converting West Hill Library into a museum. This sum would be required to make the library a secure and environmentally sound facility for housing the museum collection and to install and display the collection. However, the consultants emphasised that this was “a very conservative estimate” and did not, for example, include the services of a professional museum designer. The present Museum, in contrast, was designed and laid out by a well-known museum designer.Staffing at the new museum will be almost half that of the present museum whose 10 full-time equivalent staff includes two curators, two education officers, a documentation specialist and staff with expertise in organising and mounting exhibitions. The projected total headcount in the new museum, in contrast, is expected to comprise 6 employees:- a curator- an education officer- an administrator and retail supervisor- a professional fund-raiser- 2 front of house staffThe draft business plan does not seek to preserve or expand the quality and range of services provided by the present Museum nor build on the excellence of its professionally designed displays. Much of the depth of expertise and breadth of local knowledge offered by the present Museum is certain to be lost. One post will be devoted exclusively to fund-raising and the reasons for this are described later on.Under the plans confirmed by ELOSC, the bulk of the present Museum staff will be made redundant at the end of September 2007. A small number of employees, including the two curators, will be retained so that the Museum can continue to open for 20 hours a week until end December 2007. In comparison, the Museum is currently open for 34 hours a week. The projected timescale for closing the present Museum and setting up the new is extremely short – three months from end 2007 to April 2008. There must be serious doubts over just how realistic this is. The relocation of the Museum from Putney Library to the Courthouse in 1995 took eighteen months’ planning and over six months to complete with a much larger team and a smaller collection.Financial IssuesThe presence of a professional fundraiser in the new Museum is just one indication of how much of a financial challenge will be faced by the charitable company that will be responsible for running it. Wandsworth Council has refused to offer any ongoing revenue support for the new Museum despite the consultants’ comment that “We have not been able to discover another museum previously funded by the local authority before moving into trust status without receiving a significant annual grant from that local authority to part fund the museum’s running costs”.A brief look at other London boroughs shows how financially committed their councils are to supporting and promoting their local museums: Net Running Costs Funded by Local AuthoritiesGunnersbury Park Museum: £297,600 53%Brent Museum: £150,000 77%Croydon Museum: £476,000 100%Wandsworth Council’s stance is all the more difficult to understand given its discovery a few weeks earlier that the actual financial out-turn for 2006/7 had added £5.7m more than expected to the Council’s General Balance.The result is that despite the donation from the Hintze Foundation of £200,000 per year for the first five years of its operation, the draft business plan for the new Museum will require the professional fundraiser to bring in £92,000 from external sources. The draft business plan provides no information about where this £92,000 will come from. In addition, the board of the new Museum will be required to generate a further £30,000 a year. It is extremely unclear where the new Museum’s projected income of £122,000 will come from, and it is even less clear how the new Museum will survive in Year 6 when the annual payments of £200,000 from the Hintze Foundation will cease. The new Board will have to work extremely hard to keep the new Museum afloat financially.One critical element if the new Museum is to secure funding and grants from heritage and other cultural bodies is the need for it to have Accreditation. There is serious doubt over whether the hard-won Accreditation granted to the present Museum can be retained when the collection is moved to a new building, with new staff and subject to a new charitable company. It will be essential for the new Museum to obtain Accreditation, since otherwise the scope for the fundraiser to win funding and grants from heritage and other cultural bodies will be sharply reduced. Draft Business Plan AssumptionsThe consultants were unequivocal on one point – “A commercial level rent [for West Hill] without considerable rebate or grant aid from WBC will make the entire West Hill museum project inoperable.” When this issue was raised during the ELOSC Meeting last week, the Council was unwilling to offer any commitment beyond a statement by a Council official that it would look “positively” on the matter. The draft business plan emphasises that anything more than a nominal rent for West Hill Library will make the plan for the Museum unworkable, but the Council has not yet been willing to commit itself even to this.The Council was equally unclear if the lease for the new Museum at West Hill would include responsibility for repairs and maintenance or whether the Council would volunteer to cover other areas, such as insurance of the museum collection, given the Council’s decision to retain ownership of the collection.One element of what is a complex equation lies partially in the hands of the De Morgan Foundation. At the ELOSC Meeting on 2nd July, the Council approved a proposal to serve two years’ notice on the Foundation under the terms of their present lease. If the De Morgan collection wishes to remain in the Borough, the Council confirmed a new lease would be put in place whose terms have yet to be negotiated. Should the new lease be unacceptable or should the De Morgan Foundation find a more congenial solution elsewhere, there is a real likelihood it will leave West Hill within the next two years. In such a case, it is unclear if the new Museum would be entitled to expand into the space vacated and, if it were to do so, on what terms. What is evident is that the departure of the De Morgan collection would be a real loss to the Borough and is bound to affect the number of potential visitors to West Hill. The Council emphasised that the draft Business Plan would have to be adopted by the board of the new charitable company and it would then be for that board to negotiate the details needed to take the Plan forward. Although the Council indicated that Michael and Dorothy Hintze were content with the draft, there remains a substantial task for the board of the new charitable company which will include up to eight other members. Until the board has finalised and approved a revised Business Plan as well as the various legal agreements that will be needed to underpin the Plan, there is no certainty that the present proposals for the new Museum will proceed as expected.The Wandsworth Museum Campaign Group (WMCG) will continue its work in representing the thousands of residents whose outspoken and continued support for the Museum has been a central factor over the last six months. The Group wishes the board of the new charitable company every success in its task of establishing a new Museum and remains available to assist in any way it can in the critical process of agreeing and implementing a final business plan.Conversion of the CourthouseThe Council has regularly sought to separate the project for the conversion of the Courthouse into a library from plans for relocating and setting up the new Museum. However, it is beyond argument that their timing and execution are inter-dependent.At the ELOSC Meeting, the Council disclosed that the cost of converting the Courthouse into a library had now risen from £1.2m to over £1.5m. However, as the Courthouse is a Grade II listed building, this new estimate is still subject to further discussions with and approval from English Heritage who have already rejected previous proposals as unacceptable.A presentation of plans for the new library confirmed what has been evident since January this year – the result will not be a modern library with convenient access to all facilities on a single floor (as at West Hill and Alvering). Instead, the bulk of the £1.5m will be devoted to overcoming the limitations and eccentricities of a Victorian building whose cellular layout and multiple floors require a host of design and layout compromises.According to the Council, the rationale for pressing on with a library in the Courthouse a few minutes’ walk from West Hill and Alvering is that it would save some staff costs, release the Alvering site for sale and would automatically attract an extra 100,000 visitors a year. The sole basis for this last statement is a rough analogy with other libraries in the Borough. No research or evidence was presented to confirm that tens of thousands of new users are ready and waiting for a library to open in the Courthouse in exchange for the closure of West Hill and Alvering. The suggestion that the creation of a central library could be deferred until the Ram Brewery site became available was rejected by the Council on the grounds that it was obliged to make savings now and could not afford to wait. This again sits strangely with the news that the Council has just found a further £5.7m in funds this year. Residents might be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that having made the creation of a library in the Courthouse an absolute article of faith, the Council is prepared to spend a large and increasing amount of tax-payer’s money to achieve this end. And this in the face of the Council’s oft-repeated concern over “continued squeezes in government funding”.Issued on behalf of the Wandsworth Museum Campaign Group on 11th July 2007
Cedric Peachey ● 7001d0 Comments ● 7001d