A STAND-STILL budget has been agreed for the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester – jointly funded by Dorset Council and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

The decision is expected to mean some savings during the coming financial year – expected to amount to around £50,000.

The decision will mean both councils contributing around £300,000 each to the county-wide service.

Previous meetings of the Joint Archives Board have heard that the Dorset service is one of the most cost-effective in the country, having managed to continue its work and expand services despite effective cuts to budget stretching back for years.

Four years ago it was said to cost each Dorset resident just 72p a year to run and, at the time, had half the staff of 2006.

Archives manager Sam Johnston praised volunteers for their help at the centre, recently putting in almost 250 hours of work during a two week 'collections weeks' project to tackle, with staff, a backlog of donated material.

He reported that the Centre has also been helped by special fundraising projects, including a recently completed £70,000 raised to catalogue the archive of Thomas Hardy, work which include an archivist being taken on for 18 months from March with the National Trust supporting the project with one of its staff one day a week.

Meanwhile a fear that an extension to the History Centre's storage capacity might have to be dropped has been averted – although remains far from certain.

Dorset Council had said it was unable to finance a 40per cent share of the capital costs – but the Lottery Heritage Fund has now said it is prepared to look at a lower share, provided extra money can be raised from other sources.

Archives manager Sam Johnston say the news means that talks about the bid can now resume in the coming months.

If successful the funding is likely to be needed in the 2026-27 financial year.

A previous application for funding in 2017 was rejected.

If the new application is agreed the centre, which serves the whole county, could add a two-storey building over the existing car park to the rear of the site, although other ideas will also be investigated.

The existing centre off Bridport Road, Dorchester was built in 1991 with an anticipated 25-years storage space although the repositories are now approaching capacity with little remaining space and archive material still coming in.

Initial costings had put the new build at around £3million, but inflation and material shortages since then are likely to have added significantly to the estimate.

Extra documents and artefacts from combining local councils in 2019 to create Dorset Council and the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authorities have added to the need for extra storage.

If the planned expansion at Dorchester can be funded it would provide 25-30 years' space but will still need match funding, possibly from charitable trusts and foundations, most likely to be combined with a public appeal.

Mr Johnston told a joint archives board meeting on Monday: "This is very good news as far as the service is concerned and gives us the ability to move forward and address the pressurised storage situation we face."

The meeting heard that the centre has recently reopened to the public after a two-week closure, dubbed 'collections weeks' where staff and volunteers took the time to tackle a backlog of donated archive material.

Mr Johnston said the experiment was so successful it was now likely to become an annual winter event. He praised volunteers who, between them, had put in almost 250 hours during the period to assist staff in sorting and auditing 1,750 boxes of material.