Dorset's joint archive service, based in Dorchester, could be costing both of the county's unitary councils more in the coming financial year.

The service, which is based at the History Centre in Dorchester housing archives ranging from council reports to personal collections, claims that for seven of the last nine financial years it has only had a stand-still budget – effectively cutting its spending power by 26% since 2012.

In the coming year the service is asking for an uplift of £44,000, about 7.7 per cent on its current annual revenue budget of £569,000.

The additional cost would be shared, almost equally, between council tax payers in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) and the Dorset Council area.

The cost of running the service is shared between the two unitary councils based on population – which would mean a rise in contributions, if approved, from £290,700 to £313,300 for the BCP Council, and increase of £22,500, and for Dorset Council from £278,200 in the current year to £299,900, an increase of £21,700.

In previous years, the service was consistently the cheapest service across the South-West and Hampshire in terms of net expenditure per 1,000 population.

A report to councillors, who meet to consider the budget today (Monday), said that although the service had managed to reduce its overall energy costs through the use of solar panels and better air quality management, it was still facing a difficult financial balancing act.

Councillors will be told that with just 11.67 (equivalent) full time posts, the service has been described as "very close to the minimum for a viable service", although has still managed to "demonstrate its ability to innovate, generate (external) income and maintain customer satisfaction and quality of service". The situation has been helped by volunteers.

Although both councils share the revenue costs of running the service, Dorset Council has met all the capital and improvement costs associated with the Dorset History Centre in Bridport Road, Dorchester, amounting to more than £747,000 over the last ten years, including a recent £200,000 payment to improve the efficiency of the building's archive stores.

Since 2010 the service has also won grant funding of nearly £765,000 to pay for cataloguing and public engagement projects and is hoping to win further funding to help pay for an expansion to its storage area, the current centre now almost at maximum capacity.

As with other public access buildings the service saw a drop in income and visitors because of Covid and is currently facing "dramatic increases" in utility costs.