Museums await answers over urgent building repairs

Budget commitments to upgrade ageing museums may be too little too late.

Nearly two years after the National Audit Office (NAO) said maintenance funding for DCMS' sponsored museums needed to double, leaky roofs and other urgent repairs remain an issue for many museums in England.

October's Budget included £300,000 for “arm’s-length body estate maintenance” at national institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Liverpool, and Duxford's Imperial War Museum, and £77m to improve museum buildings outside London over the next three years.

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But demand for funds to fix other museums' infrastructure and protect important collections outstrips what's available – repairs worth £413m were needed, according to the NAO.

The Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) will distribute £18.8m in 2022, offering grants of between £50,000 and £5m.

The programme, administered by Arts Council England (ACE), is massively oversubscribed: "Demand at [the] expression of interest stage was very high and we had to make some difficult decisions," the funder has said.

It will give grants to non-sponsored museums and the local authorities responsible for their maintenance. Up to 1,800 museums are eligible.

The deadline for those museums invited to make a full application was October 18. ArtsProfessional asked ACE how many full applications it had received and the total amount of money requested but ACE declined to share this until the successful applicants are announced in February.

Make do and MEND?

Although some money will go to libraries, the bulk of £77m pot is expected to be distributed through MEND.

While broadly welcomed by the sector, the amount falls short of £125m pledged when MEND was first announced in October 2019. The programme was later put on hold due to Covid-19.

Director of the Museums Association Sharon Heal highlighted the disparity: "It should be noted that the Government originally committed to £100m of spending on the MEND programme."

She added: “The Chancellor’s announcement goes some way to making good on the Government’s original commitment.”

Threats to collections

Bury Museum and Art Gallery has removed paintings from display due to leaks, replacing them with a projection piece.

Built in 1901 to display the Wrigley Collection of Victorian art, the council-run venue is also home to Bury Library.

It hopes for £800,000 from MEND to fix a leaking roof and other related repairs.

Arts and Museums Officer Sarah Evans said water damage has been a problem for years but has become “more of a threat to the fabric of the building and the collection" over the past 18 months.

“There are a number of areas in the galleries on the first floor of the building where the signs of water ingress are progressively getting worse,” she said.

Birmingham Art Gallery and Museum, closed to the public for major rewiring work, has applied for nearly £5m to water damage.

A September report by operator Birmingham Museums Trust,said at least 47 parts of the building were affected. Of all the Birmingham Council-owned museums, it notes Birmingham Art Gallery and Museum's repairs are the most urgent.

The trust said that, if successful, MEND funding will “enable much-needed infrastructure repairs and maintenance”.

MEND’s application process stipulates that works cannot begin before a funding offer is accepted.