Your views on proposals that would see service changes and a reduction in searchroom hours at Norfolk Record Office

Overview

Norfolk County Council helps make the county better for everyone who lives or works here or travels to Norfolk. The many services we run include ensuring children and young people have the best start in life, providing the fire and rescue service, protecting vulnerable people, maintaining a safe road system and helping improve the economy. We spend over a billion pounds every year providing public services.

The use of our services, particularly by those becoming older, is growing every year. Demand is rising but the amount of money we receive from central government is declining; we now receive £204 million less each year, compared to 2011/12, and this is also expected to fall to zero by 2020/21.  

We have developed a financial strategy to overcome these challenges through these principles:

• Offering our help early to prevent and reduce demand for specialist services
• Joining up our work so that similar activities and services are easily accessible, done well and done once
• Being business-like and making the best use of digital technology to ensure value for money
• Using evidence and data to target our work where it can make the most difference.

Since 2011/12 we have saved the best part of £364 million, including £246 million of efficiency savings. We are proposing to save £79 million, including new saving proposals for 2019/20 to 2021/22, over the next three years and we are also identifying ways of bridging a remaining gap of £45.98 million.

Even though we are proposing to increase council tax next year, by the minimum required to put our finances on a sound footing, the amount of money we hope to raise wouldn’t be enough to balance our budget. 

This means we must continue to make some difficult decisions about how we spend your money.

The council has therefore been looking at how we can save money on all our services, community and environmental services.

We are proposing to change the focus of our staff which would mean a reduction in opening hours for the Norfolk Record Office searchroom and affect the level of some other services that we provide.

This proposal would save us £75,000 in 2019/20.

Why your views matter

We want to find out what people think about our proposal and how it might affect them if it went ahead.

We are consulting through:

- This online consultation, which is also available as a paper copy.

- Paper copies available in the Norfolk Record Office searchroom.

- Individual letters and / or meetings with stakeholders including Heritage Lottery Fund, Norfolk Record Society, Norfolk Family History Society, Norfolk Archives and Heritage Development Foundation, Diocese of Norwich, Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society and Norfolk Archaeological and Historical Research Group.

We are consulting from 5 November 2018 to 23 December 2018. Please note that if we receive any consultation responses after this date we cannot guarantee that we will be able to take them into account.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our county councillors as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about our proposals.

Find out more and have your say online by clicking on the feedback form below.

If you need a copy of this consultation document on paper or in a different format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk