Getting More out of Our Spending
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GETTING MORE OUT OF OUR SPENDING Proposal 1: Museums Offer Portfolio Lead: Citizen Focus and Engagement 1. Summary of Proposal 1.1 The proposal is to meet MTFP savings targets of £0.150m through changes to the operation of museums. This will include: Reduction in the number of the sites from which the Museums Service operates. Changes to opening hours to better match customer demand. Changes to fees and charges. Changes to management structure. 2. Background 2.1 The proposal follows a full internal review of the Council’s museum offer, which will result in a new museums forward plan for the period 2020-2023 delivered within a reduced financial envelope. Stockport Council has a high number of cultural assets compared to other Boroughs in Greater Manchester. This review will focus museum provision on a reduced number of sites and reinvigorating and refreshing the offer at these sites. Alternative uses will be found for any sites that are no longer required for core museum purposes. In some instances, this may provide opportunities for community organisations or volunteers. 2.2 The Council will also adopt a new approach to its use of collections, seeking to display these in different, more accessible locations and increase audience interaction with objects. 3. Scope 3.1 The museum sites in scope of this review are: Air Raid Shelters Bramall Hall Chadkirk Chapel Hatworks (see below) Staircase House Stockport Museum 1 War Memorial Art Gallery 3.2 As part of a separate, but linked, development, the Council has for some time been seeking to refresh and reinvigorate the offer at Hatworks as this site has now been open nearly 20 years. During the consultation period, arts and health organisation, Arc, have relocated to the top floor of the museum, creating a new arts hub in Stockport town centre. The museum galleries are now temporarily closed to the public whilst refurbishment and reinterpretation works take place. It is anticipated that the site will fully reopen in 2020 to coincide with its 20th anniversary. 4. Consultation and Engagement Engagement Stakeholders Engagement Period Method Museum visitors and residents Public of Stockport Consultation via Have September- November 2019 Your Say website Staff Staff consultation on broad September- November 2019 proposals and changes to workforce Schools and other partners E-mail link to Have Your September- November 2019 Say website 4.1 Elected Councillors have been involved throughout all stages of consultation and engagement, both at Scrutiny Committee and in other settings. 4.2 Consultation with the public and other stakeholders has taken place. The full results of the public consultation are shown in Appendix 1a. 4.3 By the close of the consultation exercise, 1198 responses to the public consultation had been received. 1084 responses were received via the Have Your Say website. 114 paper copies of the consultation document were received. 4.4 Two petitions relating to the proposals were started by members of the public and local groups on the change.uk platform. By the closure of the public consultation, there were 4565 signatories to the Prevent the Closure of Stockport Museum petition and 2534 signatories to Stop the Closure of Stockport Art Gallery. Relevant comments from the petitions were assessed in 2 relation to the proposals made in the public consultation. 4.5 Separate submissions on the public consultation were received from 5 stakeholder organisations 4.6 The staff consultation on the broad proposals elicited 9 responses, including two group responses. 5. Detailed Proposals and Consultation Feedback 5.1 There were four elements to the original proposal: Reduction in the number of the sites from which the Museum Service operates. Changes to opening hours to better match customer demand. Changes to fees and charges. Changes to management structure. Each of these were broken down into more detailed propositions. 5.2 Proposal 1: Reduction in the number of sites from which the Saving museum service operates. £0.040m (a) Relocate the Stockport Museum family gallery to a more suitable and accessible location in Stockport Town Centre, make greater use of the War Memorial Art Gallery for displaying the Council’s other museum collections and close Stockport Museum in the Market Place. (b) Offer local organisations the opportunity to run the visitor and refreshment facility at Chadkirk Chapel and for the Council to cease operating the museum offer at the site. 5.3 The rationale behind the original proposal was as follows: Running seven sites across different locations requires a significant amount of management to make sure that all museums are appropriately staffed during current opening times and to respond to any issues at the different buildings. The Council already has limited ability to change and refresh displays in its museums. This can discourage visitors returning to our sites after an initial visit because there is nothing new to see. We propose to focus on developing and improving those sites which are most important to defining Stockport’s identity as a town and which are most important as buildings in their own right. Hatworks, which has not changed 3 significantly since it opened in 2000, it requires improving and updating. To facilitate this, gallery spaces are temporarily closed for refurbishment and reinterpretation. The Stockport Museum building, which opened in 2005, is not considered to play a major role in the town’s heritage. With the exception of the popular family gallery, the site has struggled to establish itself either with residents or visitors to Stockport. The family gallery is too small for the number of people who want to use it and access is poor, particularly for parents with small children. The original proposal was that a more suitable location was found for the family gallery, and that other key museum collections were displayed at the War Memorial Art Gallery. If this proposal were to proceed in its original form, Stockport Museum would be closed in September 2020, once improvements to Hatworks have been completed. Chadkirk Chapel’s offer as a museum is limited, but the site attracts visitors for various activities and refreshments. The site has been increasingly used as a venue for civil weddings in the past two years. Our original proposal was to work with local organisations to see if they were interested in taking over responsibility for opening the Chapel to the public and operating the refreshment facility at the site. Under the original proposal, the Council would no longer operate Chadkirk Chapel as a museum. Discussions through the consultation process have highlighted that there are a number of other opportunities which could be explored with local groups at the site. 5.4 As well as 1198 responses to the public consultation, 4565 people had signed a change.uk petition entitled Prevent the Closure of Stockport Museum and 2534 people had signed another entitled Stop the Closure of Stockport Art Gallery as at the close of the public consultation on 18th November. The Council has received separate written submissions from a number of local organisations. Detailed feedback was also received from museums staff. Meetings to discuss the proposals took place with local stakeholder organisations, including Friends of Chadkirk, Stockport Art Guild and Vernon Mill Artists. 5.5 Within the public consultation, 70.6% of respondents strongly disagreed or tended to disagree with the proposal to reduce the number of sites operated by the museum service. 24.3% of respondents strongly agreed or tended to agree with this proposal. Of comments received relating to this proposal, 14.4% related specifically to Chadkirk Chapel, 12.9% related specifically to Stockport Museum, 9.5% related specifically related to the War Memorial Art Gallery. 5.6 Feedback received through the consultation process asked the Council to look at a number of alternative options which could potentially enable the proposed saving to be achieved, but would enable collections and buildings to remain accessible and deliver solutions which were sustainable over the medium and 4 longer term. It was not possible to fully investigate these options prior to the closure of the public consultation. 5.7 In response to this feedback, we propose to carry out further investigation of alternative solutions prior to moving to implementation of Proposal 1. Specifically, we propose to: (a) Further investigate potential alternative management models for the public programme at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery, possibly involving local art groups, to significantly reduce operational costs at this site and enable the current exhibitions model to continue. We aim to come to a conclusion on this by 30th September 2020. (b) Identify alternative ways of providing access to museum collections in Stockport Town Centre, which would enable us to achieve the savings required by the closure of Stockport Museum, whilst addressing concerns that have been raised through the consultation process. We aim to come to a conclusion on this by 30th September 2020. (c) Investigate how regular public access to the museum offer at Chadkirk Chapel could be maintained whilst still achieving the necessary budget savings required. We aim to come to a conclusion on this by 31st March 2020. 5.8 Whilst the requirement to achieve the savings required from the initial proposal remains, the Council is committed to fully investigating the alternative suggestions which have been made through the consultation process before implementation of the original proposal. It is proposed that any budget pressures arising from delays to implementation are funded from one-off reserves. 5.9 Proposal 2: Changes to public opening hours to better match Saving customer demand £0.040m (a) Change public opening hours at Air Raid Shelters so that the site is open to the public Thursday and Friday 1pm-5pm, Saturday 10-5pm and Sunday 11am-4pm.