The Story

Key details

Date of redevelopment: The Story opened 14 June 2024
Cost: £20 million
Who funded it: Durham County Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund, European Union Regional Development Fund, UK Government Northern Powerhouse, the Wolfson Foundation, Banks Group

Case study themes

Service sustainability, community engagement, accessibility, environmental sustainability

Project summary

Housed in Durham County Hall, Durham County Record Office found itself in 2013 at the centre of a service redesign when the council proposed to demolish the building. Designed specifically as a record office when County Hall was built in the 1960s, the service had slowly expanded to fill the entire lower ground floor and was in urgent need of a new home.

The Record Office has now moved across the city to become a key partner in The Story following collaboration with other teams from the Culture, Sport and Tourism Directorate. The Story is a fully integrated council service which plays an important role in the life story of the county’s residents. It is a part new-build, part refurbished building that combines the County Record Office, Historic Environment Record, Local Studies, Durham Light Infantry Collection and Durham County Registration Service.

The archive strongrooms have been built to ‘passive house’ standards and, combined with an impressive array of solar panels and over 60 ground source heat pumps, the modern extension uses less energy than a conventional build.

Challenges and opportunities

Being part of a larger project meant bringing five collections and three services together in one space, which presented various challenges. Timelines for carrying out the archive move needed to fit into the overall project plan, and this meant having a clear and defined schedule for the work.

The physical restrictions of the building proved troublesome. If a lift can only fit two standard sized cages at once, this ultimately sets the pace at which items can be moved. These physical issues affected the way the move progressed far more than staff absences, maintaining a statutory enquiry service and developing a whole new service delivery model. Understanding these restrictions and planning accordingly reduces their impact.

It can be worth dreaming big, as it can pay off. The National Lottery Heritage Fund rejected the initial plan, however it encouraged submitting a development plan. Rather than being a negative experience, the team were able to use this time to dream big and consider what they wanted the service to look like. It also offered the chance to think about the customer journey within the building, as visitors could range from school groups and wedding parties to overseas researchers and the recently bereaved. Dreaming big led to a grant of £1.2 million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

It was important to consider the varying needs of statutory services. Despite both being statutory services with responsibilities for record keeping, the Record Office and the Registration Service have service users with very different needs. Registrars, for example, require 24-hour access to their records to be able to provide their emergency registration service.

An extended closure period was necessary. Any capital building project affects service users, not least when collections are being moved. The need to close the service for in-person visitors followed a lengthy closure period due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This meant that the archives were inaccessible to in-person visits for four years.

Outcomes

Good advocacy brought stakeholders along for the whole journey. The team worked hard to be visible during the process with community groups, depositors, councillors and council departments.

A place to dwell and a place to eat your lunch: The customer journey and the wide variety of potential visitors was considered in detail. This has resulted in a space which can accommodate a school group needing a lunch break, new parents arriving early to register the birth of their child and in need of coffee, and researchers spending the day in the collections search room. A welcoming foyer area with a retail space means different types of visitors can be easily and sensitively directed around the building.

The Story is a building that works for everyone. Involving the council’s Facilities Management team means that the day to day running of the building works for both staff and visitors. Facilities Management worked with the contractors to resolve problems as they came up and learnt how to use the building’s systems as they were installed.

What did you learn from the process?

Good planning. The move was planned in great detail and took into account a large number of practical issues. This included:

• Small considerations that make a big difference: using masking tape to label crates (you can write on it and it peels off easily); breaking in steel toecap shoes early (avoids blisters) and having indoor shoes (avoids marking the new floors); buying good quality stickers for numbering shelves (so they don’t fall off!).
• Space issues: having enough space to store packing material and equipment, as well as to pack boxes and store them. At least two strongrooms were emptied /restocked at a time to avoid congestion and use time efficiently.
• Good communication: using radios as the main means of contact (as mobile phone reception in strongrooms is always patchy); using a flipchart to list daily tasks and priorities (and making sure everyone checks it); using WhatsApp to communicate between the team, especially when spread across two sites.

A brand new public building needs chairs and tables for the public to use, as well as desks, kitchen facilities and other equipment for staff to use. Due to circumstances beyond the archive team’s control, none of the furniture, fittings and equipment arrived as planned on completion day. Ladders and trolleys had to be sourced for the new strong rooms to allow the collection move to take place. Following a considerable delay, everything did arrive in time for opening.

The council’s procurement framework meant that a local removal firm was contracted to do the removal instead of a specialist archive firm. There was a concern that there could be a skills gap, however this was overcome by running two induction days for the removal firm. This included archives handling training. The induction was used as a reference point throughout the removal to make sure everything was done properly.

What is one piece of advice you would give others in a similar position?

Identify your key priorities, focus on the details and be resilient. Capital projects require flexibility and compromise, but be clear about when you can compromise and when you can’t. It is important that everyone understands and respects the expertise that archive teams bring to a project, in the same way that architects and builders do.

Detail matters when it comes to complex decision making – this might mean collecting and using your own data rather than relying on someone else’s. Two of the data sets collected and used in the project included the size and weight of boxes and temperature and humidity readings. Data about the boxes helped with planning where things would go in the new strong rooms. This meant the move was very efficient.

The temperature and humidity data collected by the team was used to check and verify the contractor’s data. Using it meant that everyone involved in the project could be absolutely sure the building had dried out and fully met the standards needed to be a ‘passive house’ before moving the collections in.

How will this work be developed in the future?

The exhibition area has been designed with flexibility in mind. It features a large community exhibition space alongside interactive, digital and physical displays that are quick and easy to change. As such, it serves as a space for celebrating community heritage and displaying co-created work as a result of new methods of public engagement.

Find out more

Visit The Story website