Update 29 Sept 2009

The National Archives announced their plans to make 10% savings from their budgets from 2010-2011 on 24 September. They include:

• Monday closures from January 2010, though document ordering and opening times will be extended on the days they remain open
• Car parking charges from April 2010
• Gradual withdrawal from instant access of surrogate records form the Open Reading Room (including removal of GRO indexes)
• Retention of advice service in Map and Large Document Room on Tuesday / Thursday evenings, though removal elsewhere
• New streamlined online document copying service to be introduced from late 2009, early 2010.

Whilst the extension of opening and ordering times is welcomed, it is a great disappointment that the initial proposals were effectively adopted in their entirety.

The Chief Executive has replied in full to the counter proposals put forward by Action 4 Archives. A link to her response can be found in News and Views; we are examining this and will respond shortly with a series of papers covering these, and other issues, raised by the campaign including:

• TNA plans for 2020, including consideration of full site closure
• Direction and focus of TNA onsite policy compared to online access to digital records
• Financial management of TNA
• Staffing issues raised by the research exercise conducted by Action 4 Archives, such as top-loading the budget with senior managers, starting salary appointments to mid or high pay bands in breach of civil service protocol; and payment of market supplements – all of which practices have caused, and are exacerbating, this funding crisis.

During TNA’s presentation on 24 September, which can be viewed on their website, two slides were put forward aimed at discrediting various claims put forward by Action 4 Archives and other users, claiming them to be myths and offering ‘facts’. This is an example of more TNA misinformation since all our statements were based on figures or statements provided by TNA, and a full rebuttal of TNA’s counter-claims can be found on this site under News and Views. Please take some time to read them, and make up your own mind.

One particular aspect of the campaign has become clear – the lack of a clear protesting voice from a family history representative body. The cuts will impact upon genealogists as much as academics, not only because of the reduced access hours but precisely because there are key flaws with the means of online access to datasets; let alone the fact that the withdrawal of the GRO indexes has gone virtually unreported. TNA is relying on a passive family history community because it can then claim to be delivering large numbers of documents to a user group that represents ‘the general public’. There needs to be strong leadership from this sector – we have received many emails and comments of complaints from individual family historians, but the representative bodies need to start speaking up too.

We are looking to reposition our campaign and move Action 4 Archives onto a more formal footing. We are actively looking for professional archivists, academic historians, and family historians to help shape strategy, not just for TNA but across the entire sector – as well as an accountant and lawyer to provide professional assistance. At this stage contributions would be voluntary and conducted via email, with no minimum time commitment. Please email us if you would like to become involved.

Finally, we have received a complaint from the Director of Customer and Business Development at TNA, Oliver Morley, about the image on our home page which he has interpreted as a suggestion that TNA are acting as thieves in some way (although in the light of Oliver’s comment it’s too easy to make a lighthearted joke about robbing Peter to pay Paul!) We are happy to oblige, and apologise if he has been personally upset in any way by this. As Jeff James stated on 24 September, we are asked to respect the fact that senior staff at TNA are also humans with feelings.