We asked residents of Warwickshire for their help in deciding how Heritage & Culture Warwickshire budget savings should be made for the next 3 years. The options included the closure to ad hoc visitors of St Johns Museum site, reduction in the opening hours of the County Record Office and the relaunch of Market Hall Museum as the main museum site following Heritage Lottery Funded refurbishment and an additional community website for digital archives and collections.
Residents were saddened to hear of the budget saving options but overall understood the reasons behind them. The overall feedback supported the options proposed for all 3 sites although it was noted that the loss of St Johns Museum to ad hoc visitors caused considerable concern to local users.
Heritage & Culture Warwickshire implemented the proposed changes. St Johns Museum closed to ad hoc visitors on 1st April 2017 although it continues to operate schools and educational visits by arrangement. The Regimental Museum was not affected by the changes. The County Record Office also changed it's opening hours from 1st April 2017 as proposed. Market Hall Museum re-opened to the public in Feb 2017 as the HCW flagship site following significant funding from the Heritage Lottery.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to give us their views.
Please see reports below.
Please note pages 57 – 60 of the survey feedback have been removed as they contain personal details.
Heritage & Culture Warwickshire (HCW) provides a wide range of services that safeguard and promote Warwickshire’s archives, human history and natural sciences and provide residents and visitors with opportunities to engage with our heritage through high quality education activities and events programmes.
We operate two museum sites in Warwick which are open to the public all year round. These are Market Hall Museum and St Johns House Museum. In addition we provide access to Warwickshire’s archives through the Warwickshire County Record Office, Warwick.
HCW is part way through a programme of transformation, to provide an enhanced offer to the public through:
The Service is facing significant financial challenge, with the need to make savings of 43% (£478,000) to its budget over the financial period 2014 – April 2017. HCW has already found some of the savings, through reductions in staffing across all areas of operation and cuts to expenditure budgets e.g. stopping the Key Arts Clients Programme, but still has savings of £261,000 to find.
We have identified potential ways of making these additional savings, and are collecting the views of our visitors, partners, funders, staff and volunteers to inform the decisions we now have to make.
How to have your say
This questionnaire can be completed and returned by post, or completed and submitted online. Other consultation opportunities will also be held at the ‘Our Warwickshire’ project events at County Libraries and public forums.
The questionnaire is in 5 sections. If you are not a user of a particular service we provide, you can move on to the next section. There is an opportunity to provide any further feedback at the end, as well as optional text boxes for specific questions.
This consultation has now closed.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to give us their views.
Returns will be analysed and considered alongside other consultation activity to enable the Cabinet of Warwickshire County Council to make informed decisions on the future of these services.
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