AN ATTEMPT to resolve the issue of the county’s museums’ problems may see the three museums of Abergavenny, Monmouth and Chepstow forced to close for one day a week.

A report has highlighted the problems of low staff numbers forcing custodians to double up on work - maintaining the front desk and museum shop whilst coping with the administrative tasks of the day-to-day operations of the museum.

The wider museums service has also struggled to balance its books, losing up to £50,000 per year since 2014/15, though it received a £26,000 boost in 2019.

“Both elements of the service will need to be reviewed in order to identify options for future delivery and ensure that these services remain sustainable for the longer term”, says the report.

But the staff would still work in the building when it is closed to the public, according to the report.

Monmouthshire County Council (MCC) spent £90,000 on a review into the county’s museums in 2016, undertaken by Amion Consulting, who proposed a new strategy to reduce staffing costs, reduce expenditure on buildings and assets and increase income which would make the system more sustainable in the future.

That report proposed to see the museums open seven days a week throughout the summer. It also proposed a lone-working policy could be introduced, saving around £35,000 a year, taking into account the required training for lone-working employees.

This did not prove popular with staff members as it meant they would be alone in the building with valuable museum artefacts.

Then in 2018, the council spent £155,000 securing advice and exploring the possibility of a charitable trust, Monlife, to provide an external “alternative delivery model”- council-speak for ‘another way to run the place’- but the idea was dropped when another report recommended not to progress with the idea, but instead retain and transform services in-house by turning Monlife into an internal body.

MCC is proposing to close all three sites to the public every Wednesday while a full review of the service is undertaken.