The opdu Report - Issue 21, November 2006

Bulletin Board
News From The Pensions Archive
Alan Herbert, Chairman of The Pensions Archive Trust

The board of The Pensions Archive Trust is considering proposals put forward by the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), which is managed and funded by the City of London, to work in partnership with them to preserve archives relating to pensions and to establish a centre of excellence for the study of archival material, both historic and contemporary, relating to occupational and personal pensions. The aim would be to establish the Pensions Archive within their existing facilities at 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0HB. This would be near to City University with which the Trust has been working closely, through its Cass Business School, to set up a facility to capture historic and important papers relating to the development of occupational and personal pension provision in the United Kingdom.

The LMA is the second largest archive service in the UK (after the National Archives); all its collections are designated as being of national importance by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. It has 79km of existing collections which include the archives of many businesses (including railway companies), charities, associations, religious and cultural organisations as well as local authorities from the Metropolitan Board of Works in the nineteenth century to the Greater London Council and Inner London Education Authority in the twentieth. These collections hold a large untapped source of information relating to pensions which could be added to the new material on pensions coming to the LMA through the Trust.

The LMA would be able to provide the infrastructure and management expertise to support the project, both in terms of professional archive and conservation knowledge and management and also in terms of an organisation which has collected, cared for and promoted archive collections since the nineteenth century. It has a long and proud tradition of record keeping, the earliest document goes back to 1067 and is an early charter of William I. The LMA has undertaken that archives deposited by, or on behalf of the Trust would be managed to the highest standards of professional care by archivists, conservators, librarians and interpretation professionals who work to national and international standards. A project archivist would be employed by the City of London and directly supervised by LMA managers.

The archive collections would be stored in the LMA strong rooms which are specially designed and run to national standards for archive storage from where they would be produced for the public to see. They would be catalogued onto the LMA’s bespoke archive cataloguing software, the latest version of which is due to go on line next year. The archives would be included in LMA’s general interpretation and outreach programmes. LMA is regularly inspected by The National Archives and related professional bodies and has received excellent results over the last decade. The proposal has been discussed with The National Archives which supports it and has offered to provide technical advice to the Trust in setting up the Pensions Archive.

The Trust and the LMA will be setting up a joint liaison group with representation drawn from the two organisations to take the proposals forward. The group would meet regularly to discuss and plan programmes and in particular will set and monitor the work of the project archivist and related activities. It is envisaged that the Trust and the LMA will also plan special events and activities, such as a reception to launch the partnership of the Trust and LMA, a special research publication and non-routine conservation work. Particular emphasis will be placed on digitising appropriate records and papers to provide easier access for students and researchers. The LMA will provide support through its Image and Design Department which already does similar work for the LMA collections which can be seen on the LMA website.

The Trust is already in discussion with website designers who specialise in pension websites and it is hoped their expertise combined with that of the LMA will produce a website for the Pensions Archive which will make it easy for the public to obtain information about the development of pension provision and saving for retirement. The two organisations feel that bringing together their respective experience in archiving and pensions will be of considerable benefit to the Pensions Archive project. They also feel their connections with the City of London are very relevant. A large number of firms and companies connected with the City provide services to pension schemes and on the educational side, the Lord Mayor is Chancellor of the City University.

The first Pension Archive collections it is hoped to place at the LMA are those of The National Association of Pension Funds and of the late George Ross Goobey. A team from the LMA and the Trust has recently assessed the NAPF archives and it is hoped to put proposals to the NAPF shortly for their transfer.

Organisations which have committed to provide financial support to the Pensions Archive project are being communicated with on these proposals as funding will be required to implement them. The board of the Trust and its Advisory Committee supports them and further discussions on the details are taking place in order to progress the implementation of them.