Council decides to reopen three Lancashire museums - Museums Association

Conference 2024: The Joy of Museums booking open now – Book before 31 March 2024 for a 10% discount

Conference 2024: The Joy of Museums booking open now – Book before 31 March 2024 for a 10% discount

Council decides to reopen three Lancashire museums

Two years after five museums were closed to save cash, a study reveals that reopening three of them with reduced hours is the most cost-effective option
Three Lancashire museums will reopen this summer after the county council discovered that it is potentially more expensive to keep them shut.

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum and the Judges’ Lodgings will reopen three days a week until October, while Queen Street Mill will reopen for a reduced number of days while renovation work is carried out.

The museums were three of a group of five that were closed in 2016 when Lancashire County Council opted to withdraw revenue funding to save money.

Fleetwood Maritime Museum has been transferred to a trust, and is now run by volunteers, with funding from Fleetwood Town Council. The Museum of Lancashire, in Preston, remains closed.

Ian Watson, the council’s libraries, museums and registrars manager, says the decision to reopen the sites is the result of both a political willingness by the council, after the Conservative Party took control in May 2017, and a failure to find a cost-effective solution for each museum.

Plans to transfer the Judges’ Lodgings to a trust, titled Lancaster Judges’ Lodgings Museums Trust, stalled after a report revealed the trust would require a significant annual grant, plus a care and maintenance regime, to run it. The trust would also commit to only three years.

Watson says closing and completely clearing the site, which houses a substantial furniture collection, would also incur significant costs because the items would need specialist storage to ensure they did not degrade.

Meanwhile, talks with English Heritage to secure the future of Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, which comprises Higher Mill and Whitaker’s Mill, and Queen Street Mill, failed because the charity could not afford to run and maintain the sites.

Assessing other options

“Following the elections in May 2017, there was a decision that we should be allowed to look at other options rather than closure,” says Watson. “The new leadership was more open to recognising that reopening may be the lowest-cost option.”

The council carried out an options study for the mill sites, funded by a grant from the Arts Council England Museums Resilience Fund, which found that working with a heritage body or reopening them with a more commercial focus were the best options.

“With the care and maintenance regime in place, there was very little additional cost in reopening,” says Watson. “Especially as reopening will generate admission costs and money from catering.”

Funding has been approved by the county council on a permanent basis for the Judges’ Lodgings, and for the next two years at Queen Street, which will also open three days a week from next summer, and Helmshore Mills. While technical staff had been retained to maintain the mills, the museums are seeking front-of-house assistants.

“There has been a lesson learned that what should have happened is an options appraisal at the outset,” says Watson. “The idea that because museums are a non-statutory service, closing them is cheaper, is an error.”

He adds that there has also been a lack of understanding about how any third-party organisations that took over running the sites would fund their work.

Alistair Brown, the policy officer at the Museums  Association, says the reopenings are a success for the campaign groups.

“It created a sense of crisis around the council,” he says. “I don’t think they realised what they were messing with when they closed five museums in one go.

“It helped put it in the minds of the new councillors that reopening was the right thing to do – but also a popular thing to do.”

Leave a comment

You must be to post a comment.

Discover

Advertisement
Join the Museums Association today to read this article

Over 12,000 museum professionals have already become members. Join to gain access to exclusive articles, free entry to museums and access to our members events.

Join