How are you on morality? Should the Minet family trust get their donation back? Also why would you want to put commercial properties in the middle of Minet conservation area? To counterbalance the offices in Brixtron Town centre being converted into flats perhaps?
before you continue, perhaps you could outline what you know of archives.I think you're missing my point. I don't give a monkeys what the building becomes; turn it into a museum celebrating the Minet family's achievements for all I care. The important thing is that the records are saved and taxpayer costs are reduced - you can't possibly complain about that can you? Or have I misread your post
you're big on this reducing taxpayer costs. do you know what sorts of material the lambeth archives holds, whether they're held in appropriate conditions, whether they have a conservator on the staff or whether one is contracted only as required? is your notion of lower taxpayer costs in the long or short term - that is, if costs went up in the short term due to the construction of a new purpose-built repository, would you object?
right. but have you any notion of the issues affecting day-to-day running of the archives, of the costs of maintaining material? do you in fact know what an archive is for?
i'll try and make this simple for you. the archive is not only the institutional memory of lambeth council but also the major resource for local history and genealogy research in lambeth. while its resources will be supplemented by the material available at the london metropolitan archives and the national archives, it is an irreplaceable body of documents. it's unique. it's where a wide range of people need to go for information about site history, about drainage information, about decisions previously made by the council. only someone who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing would be so fussed by the rate of funding it receives - i would not be surprised if the archives and the libraries were the most popular parts of the council. i don't know what you do, but i am sure it is not as socially valuable as the work done by librarians and archivists in lambeth.
You only have to look next door to the BCA see how such plans can swiftly go awry.
the thing you don't understand is that the archive underpins a range of services for which you appear happy to pay, that this is done pretty much on a shoestring anyway, and that there's not much in the way of cuts which can be done without undermining the future security of the maps, photos, papers, books etc etc which comprise the archival collection.
Or surely rather than selling outright, they could issue medium/long leases on the buildings/land, that way should they need it back in the future, they can get it without having to shell out insane amounts. It feels like the idiotic selling off of primary schools they indulged in a while back which, with increased numbers of kids now, has resulted in insane expansions of most schools around me, & there's no hope in hell the council can buy any new land to build a new school on.
