Councillor Hayley Coles, Cabinet Member for Communities and Culture, was appointed chair of the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Joint Archives Committee, and Councillor Sarah Hill, Cabinet Member for Finance and Corporate Services, was appointed vice chair. The committee approved the annual report detailing the work of the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service and the Staffordshire Archive and Heritage Service for the period of April 2024 to March 2025, reviewed and agreed the risk register for the service, and noted the benchmarking exercise comparison. Councillors also noted the 2024-25 final outturn position, the 2025-26 current budget forecast position, and approved a transfer of £16,000 into the Staffordshire County Council general reserve for time-lapsed projects. Finally, the committee approved the updated volunteer policy and noted the use of an updated volunteer agreement.

Annual Report 2024-2025

Joanna Terry, Head of Archives, Heritage and Culture for Staffordshire County Council, presented the annual report for the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service, highlighting significant achievements in meeting the strategic objectives of the service's forward plan from 2021 to 2025.

For the Staffordshire service, the 8.7 million National Lottery Heritage Funded Staffordshire History Centre project made significant progress, with construction completed in the summer of 2024 and the site reopening to visitors in November 2024. The museum service was fully accredited again by the Arts Council England in February 2025, restoring accreditation for the first time since 2017. The service developed and toured two large and three small exhibition venues, including:

• Beneath Our Feet, exploring the industrial and agricultural heritage of Staffordshire
• Leap to Landudno, covering the history of holidays and leisure for local residents
• Knowing Your Onions, co-curated with children at a holiday scheme in Tamworth and individuals of Eastern European heritage, using food and recipes to identify heritage and belonging
• A Case for the Ordinary, about the experience of patients in the county's 19th and early 20th century asylums
• A Brush with Faith, about J.L. Pettit's watercolour landscapes

The City Archives celebrated its first full year of opening on 21 May 2025, after reopening at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent in May 2024. The number of archives and local studies items produced increased by over 300%. The City Archives played an important role in the Stoke-on-Trent City centenary celebrations, developing a Living Heritage City smartphone app called Walk the History of the City, guiding users on a journey from the centre of Stoke to the entrance of the Potteries Museum, passing by the station and Hanley Park and other significant landmarks in the city.

The service continues to collect, accession, and catalogue items, with the Staffordshire service taking in about 10 shelves of material, including a significant deposit of material for Stafford Market, including plans, ledgers, administrative files, and photographs. The City Archives received 51 accessions, including Royal Dalton engraving books and the Shelley in Tarsier pattern book, and a large collection from Goodwin's Jewellers of Hanley.

Since reopening the City Archives last May, they have received 940 visitors in their reading room. The research room at the Staffordshire History Centre has received 444 visitors since the Staffordshire Service opened in November. In November 2024, a new hosted joint service website was launched, creating a more attractive and easy-to-navigate homepage and promoting both the History Centre and the City Archives.

Volunteers have continued to process images to add more resources to the Staffordshire Past Track website, adding 194 images this year. The History Centre blog continues as a way to share information about projects, with support from volunteers for blog posts. The service has 89 volunteers, who gave over 4,500 hours, which is a cost equivalent of £90,000. In Stoke, volunteers contributed 729 hours this year, covering a range of activities from cataloguing, indexing, packaging, and conservation.

In-person visits increased significantly from 47 in the previous year to 7,909, an increase of 16,827%. Compared to 2019-20, the last year without disruption, there was an increase of 45.6%. The number of documents produced increased by 222%, and the number of inquiries went up by 16.4%. Attendees at events across the service increased by 16.7%, and volunteer hours increased by over 13%. In a National Archive Customer Survey, 94.5% of respondents scored the staff advice at 10 out of 10.

The service's risk register covers risks to collections, physical collections, digital collections, staff, members of the public and volunteers, operation of the public service, and forward planning. Of the 16 risks, six are rated green, eight amber, and one red. The red risk relates to digital archives, completing the new website, and the transfer of cataloguing software to an updated, cloud-based package.

The National Archives completed an annual archive service benchmarking exercise, which was opened up beyond just local authority archives to all archive services. The survey was completed using data from 2022-2023. The service performed well, with the second highest number of staff, but the least number of archivists. It had the second highest number of volunteers, but the highest number of volunteer hours. It had the second largest physical analogue collection, and the most that is catalogued online. It also has a digital preservation system. It had the second highest number of inquiries and the fourth highest number of website visitors.

Councillor Hayley Coles asked about the number of archivists, and whether there was an opportunity to get more archivists in, given that the service had the second highest number of staff. Joanna Terry explained that archivists have a particular professional qualification, and that archivist salaries are higher than other members of staff, so there is a significant cost implication. She also noted that the service went through a significant restructure in 2021, taking out 40% of the budget. However, the service has recently recruited a new collections manager with an archivist background, which has upped the archivist ratio by one FTE¹ already without any cost implication.

Councillor Sarah Hill asked about metrics, such as the uptake of the walk around the cities using the app, website statistics, a forward-looking marketing plan, the top requests on what people are looking at in the archives, how the exhibitions or themes are decided, and whether the activities in the archives are linked to the libraries. Joanna Terry responded that they can get the metrics on the Living Heritage City Trail, and that the specialist company that designed the website is providing an analytics system. She added that they worked closely with the internal communications team at Staffordshire County Council around the launch period, and that they will be getting specialist input and planning for sustainability in the future. Exhibition themes come from the collections, and they have also done a lot of co-production work with audiences. They have a good working relationship with the libraries, and try to collaborate on social media and promotion, linking in with the Summer Reading Challenge.

Another councillor asked whether the visitor numbers were unique visitors or visits, and Joanna Terry clarified that they get both. She added that the touring exhibitions give them an opportunity to take the service out to places where it may not be possible to physically visit, and that the Past Track website has its own Facebook page, which is incredibly popular when they share local images.

A councillor asked about education, and what the plan was to reopen at Stoke. Angela Glitheroe, Director of Strategy, Economy and Communications at Stoke-on-Trent City Council, responded that they are benefiting from being in the same building as the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, and that they are working towards really having those two services really integrated as one in that collection. She added that on Tuesdays, the building is closed to the public but still open for school visits, and that they have a nice space and time on Tuesdays where they focus on children and education. She also noted that there is a lot of work going on in the city and across the county around volunteering, and that they have more work to do in terms of linking that to their supporting people to get back into work plans and policies.

A councillor asked about the Friends of the William Salt Library and the Friends of the Archive Service, and whether they put content out. Joanna Terry responded that the Friends of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service are very active, holding talks at the History Centre and raising money for the service. She added that the Friends of the William Salt Library are somewhat less active, but still exist and meet.

A councillor asked about Goodwin's Jewellers, and the nature of their contribution. Joanna Terry responded that it was a former jewellers business in Hanley, and that the records that they took in were standard business accounts, but that the most interesting items were some beautiful jewellery designs.

A councillor asked how many living trails there were within Staffordshire, and what was being done to promote those and improve those trails. Angela Glitheroe responded that the one that they have been referring to is the first one in Stoke-on-Trent, and that they created that as part of their centenary celebrations for 2025, with UK Share Prosperity funding. She added that the plan is to roll them out, and that they are planning two more now in the north of the city.

A councillor asked what collaborations they had with stately homes within Staffordshire, how they mapped private collections, and how they promoted inter schools and how vigorous they were in promoting inter schools rich heritage. Joanna Terry responded that they have really good relationships with the stately homes, and that the original collections from the Williams Library and the early collections from Staffordshire Record Office now forms the History Centre were from stately homes. She added that they have excellent links with Weston Park in the south of the county, and a good relationship with Chillington Hall, where the owner is a member of the Williams Court Library Trust. She noted that they are aware of other archives that are held in private hands, and that they facilitate access for one collection, supported by the National Archives. Sarah English, Learning and Interpretation Manager, responded that they are in the very early days of their school offer, and that they have done a lot of development work with local schools. She added that they currently host a teacher network, and that they are just about to launch some free CPD² events for teachers.

Joint Archive Services Final Outturn for 24/25 and the Forecast Outturn for 25/26

The committee noted the 2024-25 final outturn position and the 2025-26 current budget forecast position.

The final net revenue outturn for 2024-25 showed an overall break-even position, with a net spend of £927,000 compared to an approved budget of £927,000. Staffordshire County Council had a £13,000 underspend due to one-off savings against employee costs, training, and general expenditure, along with a slight overachievement of income. Stoke-on-Trent came in on budget. On sites and public services, Staffordshire had an overall underspend of £11,000 due to one-off staffing savings, partially offset by an underachievement of income. Stoke-on-Trent had a break-even position due to savings and an overachievement of income. The overall underspend for Staffordshire of £13,000 was transferred to the retrospective reserve for Staffordshire County Council. The proposed transfer from the reserve of Stoke-on-Trent of £20,000 was actioned for the £9,000 moving costs, but due to the savings generated in year and the overachievement of income, only £5,000 of the originally approved £11,000 was required to be transferred from the reserve to fund the archives budget shortfall. The overall overspend of £3,000 has been transferred to the retrospective reserve with a split of £11,000 underspend to Staffordshire County Council's reserve and the £14,000 overspend for Stoke to provide for an overall break-even position.

The overall reserve position for the joint archive service totals £567,000. During the financial year, there were a number of transactions that came both into and out of the retrospective reserves. For Staffordshire County Council, there was a transfer into the general reserve of £24,000, of which £13,000 related to the underspend against the core services and £11,000 for the underspend against public sites and services. Another transfer into Staffordshire County Council's general reserve was for £16,000 for time lapsed projects. There was a transfer from Staffordshire County Council's general reserve for £30,000 towards the associated cost for the light sculpture in the archway entrance to the Staffordshire History Centre. For Stoke-on-Trent, from the general reserve, £14,000 of which £9,000 related to the removal costs associated with relocating the archives service and £5,000 towards the archives budget shortfall.

The forecast outturn for this financial year shows an archives budget of £990,000, an increase of £63,000 when compared to last financial year's budget. To date, the spend is £151,000. It is forecast that both the core and sites and public services will both break even after taking account of on course services overall forecast and spend of £10,000, which is due to one-off savings against Stoke-on-Trents employees due to delays of the appointment of the vacant archives manager job share post. It is assumed that any final overall and spend is currently £10,000 that forecast that it would be transferred to Stoke's retrospective reserve to provide for a break-even position. Staffordshire County Council sites and public services are forecast to break-even at this stage, and Stoke-on-Trents are forecast to break-even.

The forecast for the remaining reserves as at the end of 2025-26, after accounting for the course services underspend on Stoke-on-Trent, it will available for use will be £453,000. This assumes some transactions that are proposed to take place in during the financial year 2025-26. As part of the Staffordshire History Centre project, they are planning to transfer £123,000 out of their general reserve as much funding towards this project. Stoke-on-Trent are planning to transfer £10,000 in, which is the forecast and spend against the core services which are due to the delays in recruiting to the archives manager job share post.

The committee approved a transfer of £16,000 into the Staffordshire County Council general reserve for time-lapsed projects.

Volunteer Policy Review

The committee approved the updated volunteer policy and noted the use of an updated volunteer agreement.

The joint service currently has 105 volunteers across different locations, who contributed over 5,000 hours of time in different roles and projects in 2024-2025. A volunteer policy has been in place since 2002, and was given an extensive review and update in 2022. Minor changes have now been made to both the volunteer policy and the agreement to ensure that they remain relevant, up to date, and continue to support the service to recruit, induct, and manage its volunteers.

The wording has been changed to acknowledge that the service now has roles that are public facing, which has been based in the Staffordshire History Centre since November 2024. The policy now covers people aged 16 above, in line with Staffordshire History Centre safeguarding policy. The agreement now has the option to provide a date of birth, which helps the service to manage and review demographic data of volunteers and explore changing trends, and an option for an exclusive newsletter via email for volunteers to keep them informed and updated on service events and activities.

Volunteers are normally surveyed annually, and the service is shortly due to put out a new survey, supported by the audience agency who are the Staffordshire History Centre's external evaluation company. Anecdotal feedback from volunteers is that volunteering is having a positive impact on their wellbeing and their life goals. The service has a new volunteer coordinator who has been in post since July 2024, giving volunteers a main point of contact and support. The service recognises and celebrates its volunteers both throughout the year and during volunteers week in June. There are an additional 40 potential volunteers who are interested in volunteering, and the service is currently working through to induct them into existing and new roles.

A councillor asked whether the volunteers get any form of remuneration, as in expenses, or careers support, particularly for younger ones looking for employment. Joanna Terry responded that they do not, and that they are very clear in the induction and recruitment process about this. The councillor then asked how they map the skills of the volunteers, and Joanna Terry responded that they create a role profile for each new role, and that they do an informal interview with every potential new volunteer.

A councillor asked about developing the skills and offering educational opportunities to children or young persons, such things as the Duke of Edinburgh's Award³. Joanna Terry responded that they do not have any direct links to other schemes, but that they know that some will register their volunteer hours with them for other things.