Bury Archives achieves three star status in national assessment

Date published: 26 February 2009

Bury Archives has received three star status in a national archives assessment and this signifies a great improvement for the service. Bury has scored 3 stars out of a possible 4 stars, an improvement by 1 star on last years score.

The assessment, which is run by the National Archives, sees all local authority archives across the UK undertake an annual self assessment. The assessment is then scored by the National Archives and the results are published.

In 2006 the National Archives began the self assessment process for services to be benchmarked and to see where improvements could be made to services. The exercise is now an annual assessment which all local authority services participate in. It looks at all areas of the service: governance, documentation of collections, access and outreach, preservation and conservation, buildings security and environment.

Bury Archives Service scored higher on every area of the assessment than the average of metropolitan councils around the country. Bury’s overall score was 62% and the national average is 61%. The average of metropolitan councils is 54.5% and the average for the North West is 59.6%.

On scoring Bury Archives assessment the National Archives have concluded that “Bury Archives is likely to improve further”.

Joanne Fitton, Bury’s Archivist, said: “This score really shows that the archive service is on the up and providing a valuable service for local residents. I am really pleased with the results and we will continue to strive to make further improvements over the coming year”.