Federation Of Family History Societies

TNA's move from the FRC to Kew

The Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Federation met at the end of June with James Strachan, Director of Public Services & Marketing at The National Archives (TNA), Chris Cooper, Head of Reader Services, and Jill Allbrooke, TNA's Centre Manager at the Family Records Centre (FRC). This was to discuss TNA's intention to relocate their records services and staff from the FRC in Islington to their main site in Kew, by the end of 2008. TNA also announced at the same time that the Office of Public Sector Information are to merge with them in October 2006.

TNA's budget has been capped at £40 million for the next 5 years, instead of the requested budget for the current year of £42 million and subsequent progressive increases to £45 million per annum. It is therefore being forced to make economies, and has decided that it can no longer justify paying the £1.1 million annual rent for use of the first floor at the FRC. That is a decision which we cannot influence. We asked about the possible alternative of TNA charging users for the use of its facilities if these were to remain in Central London (and if the charges were acceptable to a sufficient number of users) and pointed out the precedent of charges being levied at New Register House in Scotland. However, it has been the policy of the Labour government not to charge for access to cultural institutions such as museums, and "archives" is interpreted as falling in that category.

One argument put forward to justify the move to Kew is that, now all available census records can be accessed online, the need to access the microfilms at the FRC has diminished. In support of this, we were told that the number of visitors to the first floor of the FRC has already decreased by one-third. We pointed out however, that the microfilms will still need to be accessible, because images of pages are known to have been missed in the digitisation process.

TNA acknowledge that Kew will be less convenient to get to and significantly increases travelling time for a large number of researchers, and we also pointed out that travelling there by tube or bus means a far longer walk to reach the premises, which may deter older researchers. Furthermore, the current location at the FRC is particularly advantageous because it is so close to the London Metropolitan Archives, the Guildhall Library, the Society of Genealogists Library, and First Avenue House.

It is also very convenient of course that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has facilities on the ground floor of the FRC, where researchers can view the Civil Registration indexes, often immediately after discovering ancestors or their siblings in the census returns. However, the ONS will also be reviewing its future requirements for services at FRC in the light of its DoVE Project to digitise registration records and modernise other aspects of service provision, and TNA's relocation to Kew.

We have been assured that ONS's review will be in close collaboration with TNA, to ensure the facilities available to researchers by both organisations remain closely aligned. We also pointed out that there may still be occasions, at least in an interim period, where specialist researchers need to be able to access ONS's current civil registration indexes, in order to reconcile discrepancies between those indexes and the future digitised indexes. This may well apply to members of the Guild of One-name Studies, for example, and others who have undertaken extensive trawls of the current indexes, possibly for academic or statistical reasons.

The Federation will continue to liaise with TNA (and with ONS), to safeguard the interests of family historians, and to help ensure that the resultant facilities at Kew deliver the same friendly and helpful service as is currently delivered by the staff at the FRC. We will also help ensure that the scope of the facilities are adequate: for example, we've already pointed out the need for additional parking facilities, including extra bays to cater for coach trips.

If you wish to read the announcements by TNA, you can visit the following pages on their website:
- The National Archives to move its Family Records Centre
- The Office of Public Sector Information and The National Archives are to merge

11 July 2006