The Keep, East Sussex – Assessing and rejecting a split-site service
Background
In December 2008 a bid to assist with funding for a new partnership archive building for East Sussex, Brighton & Hove and the University of Sussex, called The Keep, was rejected by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). On returning to assess their options the project board/partners were determined to move away from their current split-sites because:
- Visits were made to off-site stores only once or twice a week and the public had to wait some time for access to items
- These visits used staff time poorly and it wasn’t good for documents to be subjected to the risks of travelling
- The main public access site and storage was not up to standard and it was assessed as more economical to solve access and storage problems at the same time
How the option of a split-site service was assessed
When the HLF application was rejected, the project board returned to assess how much of the original project they could deliver without the HLF funding. The current main archival storage areas were below standard and making no change was not an option; that would continue to put archives at risk and jeopardise their Place of Deposit status and ability to accept collections under the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax scheme.
The project board examined a variety of options, aiming to reduce the cost of the project to their new budget – for example: reducing the size of some rooms; changing the layout; carrying out a value engineering exercise with the contractor and architect and commencing building work as soon as possible to take advantage of the downturn in the economy.
They considered phasing the building of repositories and compared the cost of building the repositories now, with retaining the off-site stores for a number of years and building an extension to the main site at a later site. The conclusion was that phasing the building of repositories was not prudent financially, due to the expected future rise in building costs. In addition, the existing off-site store was some way distant from the main site and running a retrieval service was not an efficient use of staff time and a risk to the archives themselves.
The preferred solution was to retain all of the original storage capacity and reduce some room sizes and specifications, whilst continuing to design to current standard (BS5454:2000). In addition the project removed the fire suppression system, while designing the building to be low fire risk and allowing for suppression to be added later if required.
The new plan for The Keep had all its storage on site.