Alan Clawley’s Library Blog

THE £193 MILLION QUESTION

09-11-2009

Birmingham Central Library campaigner Alan Clawley tries to make sense of the Council’s plans for a £193 million replacement building in Centenary Square – and specifically the cost of replacing the current archives.

The city librarian, Brian Gambles, has told Friends of the Central Library in an email that the archive store in the building is rated the “second worst in the UK”.

Mr Gambles also revealed that a decision was made not to bring it up to the latest standard (BS5454:2000) because it was “impractical and expensive”.

We know that the most valuable and irreplaceable paper archives should be kept in a secure room in which temperature, humidity, airflow and light are strictly controlled, but according to Mr Gambles the two locations on the 7th floor and the one in the basement used to store the archives do not comply with that standard.

Floor plans supplied by Mr Gambles show that “archive storage” occupies only 1,416 square metres of floor space in a library of 24,700 square metres, so the facilities are relatively small.

Yet it seems that no money could be found to bring them up to a standard that would preserve the city’s precious archives.

It’s all the more strange then that Mr Gambles is now presiding over the design of a replacement library costing £193 million, the money for which has been raised by  “prudential “borrowing.

It could not possibly have cost more to bring the small existing archive storage up to standard than to build a new one.

The problem is that Mr Gambles has yet to tell me where the archive store will be in the new library. 

Floors 5 and 6 are labelled “Archive and Heritage” and will provide, according to my measurements, about 4,000 square metres of useable “open plan” floor space.

At an average cost of £6,225 per square metre (obtained by dividing £193 million by a total floor space of 31,000 square metres) these two floors will cost a staggering £24,900,000 to build.

Even if Mr Gambles only intends to have the same floor space for archive storage that he has at present it will cost him £8,814,600.

Is that really more practical and less expensive than upgrading what he already has?

Brian Gambles is invited to reply.  Just email editor@thestirrer.com

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