Mr John
Foster, the Head of Regeneration and Economic Development,
presented the Museum Governance Review Annual Update to the
Committee.
Mr
Foster highlighted to the Committee that:-
1.
The report looked at options to take the project
forward which would include preparing a large scale bid to the
National Lottery Heritage Fund.
If the bid was successful this would enable the vision as laid out
in the 20 Year Plan to be realised. However, there was a two stage
process to the bid for funding, stage 1 could take two years and
even if the bid progressed through stage 1, there was no guarantee
that stage 2 would also be successful and the whole process,
including completion of all the works, could take approximately 5
years.
2.
The Museums Director and
the Employer Agent would work together to explore costs to create
the spaces to tell the story of Maidstone at the Museum.
During
the ensuing discussion, Committee Members made the following
comments:-
·
That it would be too early to make a decision on
whether to go for the National Lottery Heritage Fund bid, the
Committee should wait until the costings have been drawn
up.
·
That it was important that assurances were given by
officers to the timescales involved and that a report would come
back in September to the Committee.
RESOLVED: That
1.
The findings of the Employers Agent be reported to this Committee in July setting out
the proposed new internal gallery spaces, improvements to
accessibility and costs.
2.
A report on the proposed galleries content, designs
and costs be presented to Committee in
September.
Voting:
Unanimous