ARCHIVE users for Dorset History Centre services will be facing 'modest' fee increases from April.

Not all charges will rise although the service has tried to stick to a guideline rise averaging 3.4per cent.

Sam Johnston, service manager for archives and records, told councillors on the joint Dorset Council and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole archive board, that each fee and charge had been looked at.

He said there had been 'push back' from some users to this year's fees but that the costs of providing some services had been increasing and needed to be covered.

New charges will also come into being for the first time to cover digitally sent video files.

In the 2024/25 financial year the centre had an income of £27,800 from fees and charges, with £17,800 from April to October this year.

Mr Johnston said the Dorset fees were mid-way when compared to other, similar, services.

Cllr Laura Beddow suggested increasing the fees to film and tv companies to even higher rates claiming that they all had 'huge' budgets.

But she was told that inquiries from either were relatively rare.

The archive manager said he had found tv companies were the first to claim poverty with most taking the attitude that the centre should be grateful they were showing an interest.

Board chairman Cllr Ryan Hope said he thought the fee and charge increases were sensible: "if we charge too much we drive people away," he said.

Mr Johnston said that about 14,500 documents had been physically looked at last year with an increase in electronic requests, a trend he expected to continue as more of the archive was converted to digital form.

Among the archive work undertaken during the year has been the cataloguing of Thomas Hardy material, including around 5,000 documents from the author's Dorchester home, Max Gate; ongoing work on the Wessex Water archive; the completion of work on the Yellow Buses collection and work on the William Barnes archives.

Work had also started on the archives from Bournemouth's Hebrew community, which was likely to continue. So far around 70 boxes of material had been transferred with the help of the congregations.