Position Statement September 2022

The Arkwright Society and Belper North Mill Trust have agreed to share space with the Arkwright Society at Cromford Mills so that together they can best display the industrial heritage story of the Arkwright and the Strutt Families and enhance the visitor experience at Cromford to illustrate that heritage to a world class standard.

The primary area to be shared is the ground floor of ‘Building 1’ at the entrance to Cromford Mills, to display existing and new interpretative material and house some historic machinery from the Belper Museum. Another area to be shared is in Cromford Creative which serves as an introduction to films on Arkwright and Strutt. The area in Cromford Creative which describes the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site and provides historic timelines to this story will remain as it is; it is an excellent introduction to Richard Arkwright and Jedediah Strutt who are portrayed in the two films.

The Volunteers from Belper and Cromford will become a single management team led by the Arkwright Society and they will work together to agree how best the stories of those two great ‘entrepreneurs’ and their families can be told and how our visitor tours can be remodelled using our tour guides from both organisations.

Belper North Mill Trust will retain some space at Belper to maintain a local presence and a focal point for tours relating to Belper. It will continue to aspire to having a world class visitor centre at Belper, and will work with the Arkwright Society to restore the historic ‘First Mill’ at Cromford and bring it back into use as an Industrial Heritage Museum. The Museum will tell the story of the Arkwrights and Strutts and their unique contribution to the industrial revolution in the Derwent Valley in the 18th Century and the history of their families thereafter.

The Trusts will collaborate on developing shared educational programmes for schoolchildren, students and the public and encouraging the interest and engagement of the local community.

Together, and for the well-being of both Trusts, we want to create a major historical tourist attraction which provides a world class industrial heritage museum about the Arkwrights and Strutts with daily public access to historic equipment, artefacts, archives and interpretative material sufficient for us to achieve accredited museum status.

John Rivers                                                                                          John Layton
Chair                                                                                                     Chair
Arkwright Society                                                                                  Belper North Mill Trust

Following the ending of the £47,600 annual Amber Valley Borough Council (AVBC) grant in March 2022 and the Landlords plan to let the museum space at commercial levels from late 2022, the Trust is not able to run the current museum premises on a financially viable basis. Despite a lease offer from the Landlord at a reduced level, we would still be incurring losses of approx. £25,000 to £40,000 a year for an indefinite period, which is clearly not sustainable.

The majority of our collections are on loan from other museums and organisations. We plan to transfer the majority of these to the Arkwright Society site in Cromford. We will liaise with the owners of the other items on their return and will request that these are made available for public display where possible.

Our “long term accommodation” preference would be a financially viable quality heritage offer at the Belper Mills site, integral with the overall redevelopment of the site. The recent Derbyshire County Council report “Options for a Visitor Centre at Belper” identified various options for how such a centre could operate. The Trust is in support of development at the Belper Mills site as identified in that report.

Additionally, the current owners in their opening paragraph of the Belper Mills site Planning Statement stated “First Investment Real Estate Management (‘FIREM’) has a Vision to provide new homes, leisure and business uses to the Mills to complement the North Mill Museum and existing business to create a visitor destination that celebrates the importance of Belper Mills as part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Sites”. We share their vision of a visitor destination worthy of representing the World Heritage Site.

For the Longer Term – For any viable public heritage based offer to operate from the site will require the collaboration and support of a number of stakeholders (Local Authorities, the Belper Mills owner, Historic England and external funding bodies). The Trust supports this approach. Our Trustees wish to retain an important role in the evolution and implementation of a future new visitor attraction worthy of a World Heritage Site. This will require close working with other organisations including the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust, Arkwrights Society and the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Co-ordinating team.

Our previous underlying budget position, assuming a full recovery of visitor numbers post COVID was:

There are around 50 Volunteers (including Trustees), who each year volunteer approx. 5,600 hours to support the offer. This has a notional value of £120,000, using Heritage Lottery Fund methodology.

With the ending of the AVBC Grant in March 2022, the Trust’s underlying losses would be around £70,000 a year. The Landlord did offer a reduction on the lease, but we would still have losses of approx. £25,000 to £40,000 a year.

The Trust was informed in August 2021, that the Leader of AVBC had made an Executive Decision to end the (£47,600) annual grant from the Council to the Trust (to operate the museum & visitor centre), from April 2022.

This will end the Council’s 25 year plus association with the Trust in supporting the operation of the museum and visitor centre.

The reserves policy is published in the Charity’s financial statements – the policy is:

An earmarked reserve has been created with the Canon Ross bequest of £340,768 and it is the intention of the Trustees that this sum is not used to fund day to day costs, but towards securing the Trust’s future operation and long term accommodation, described as its ‘Development Program’.

The Trust could look to use the majority of its earmarked reserve as match funding towards external funding linked to creating a heritage based visitor centre to interpret, develop and preserve the heritage of the DVMWHS with a particular emphasis on the Belper Mills site.

Funding leverage.  Most external funding grants require some contribution as match funding – some require a 10% match funding, so potentially a £300,000 contribution from the Trust could lever in a further £2,700,000 of external funding towards the heritage deficit of the site. Other stakeholders would consider match funding also, adding to the grants available for the site.

Conversely, for every £1 that is used from our reserves to fund current operations, there is potentially £9 lost from future grants for the site.

Hence the need to protect the Trusts reserves, to help realise the long term aim for the DVMWHS and Belper Mills site.

The balancing unrestricted general funds of circa £60,000 provide a contingency to cover exit costs from the museum, set up costs for a new smaller on site premises and likely short term losses from operating a smaller scaled offer from the Belper Mills site over the next few years.

Come and visit us in 2023 – check our website for opening times.

Strutts North Mill Museum – Home – Strutts North Mill Museum Belper (belpernorthmill.org.uk)

If you would like to offer some advice or assistance to the Trustees on our future plans, please contact treasurer@belpernorthmill.org.uk

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, see our website for details

Volunteering – Strutts North Mill Museum Belper (belpernorthmill.org.uk)

If you are interested in becoming a Trustee, see our website for details

Vacancies – Strutts North Mill Museum Belper (belpernorthmill.org.uk)

or email companysecretary@belpernrthmill.org.uk

We will provide more information about our future as this develops.

The Trust has approx. £400,000 in reserves. The majority of this (£340,768) is from a bequest received from Canon Ross (a former Trustee) in 2016. There are no restrictions placed against it. The balance of reserves are from COVID support grants.

Trustees could decide to use the reserves and fund the annual losses for a few years.

However, Trustees have decided that this is not the best use of the Charity reserves. The preferred plan for the reserves is explained in the following question.