Historic council documents were 'abandoned'

From the Lancashire Telegraph, first published Friday 29th Dec 2006.

DOZENS of historic documents were left for up to 10 months in a part of Darwen town hall's basement contaminated by asbestos.

And the town's Local History Society has blasted Blackburn with Darwen Council for not moving the papers earlier.

Brown asbestos was discovered in part of the basement in February as part of the asbestos surveys carried out on all council buildings.

The area has since been out of bounds and cordoned off for the safety of staff.

But it was not until earlier this month that the papers kept there were assessed and removed.

Specialist staff from Lancashire Records Office wearing protective clothing carried out an assessment of the papers.

They found old minutes from Darwen Municipal Borough Council which had been quite badly damaged by damp plus unknown printed docu-ments which are still being assessed to determine what historical value they have.

Darwen MBC ceased to exist after local govern-ment re-organisation in 1974.

Jayne Waring, of the Local History Society said: "People are fuming in Darwen over the documents and some don't even know they exist.

"People need to be made aware of the amount of documents that are there. They should have been assessed much earlier.

"I hope they can still be saved. I don't want to see these pieces of history disappear."

Andrew Lightfoot, deputy chief executive of the council, said: "The risk to the documents is due to the presence of asbestos and the way it has to be removed, not the length of time they have been stored.

"The removal of asbestos is carried out by specialist contractors under strictly controlled conditions and it is this process that may pose a threat to them.

"All of the documents are potentially contam-inated, and our concern is to try to salvage them if possible. This has been a lengthy process and we are now determining the most appropriate course of action to follow."

He added: "The contaminated area of the town hall basement was visited earlier this month by the council's inform-ation manager and a representative of the archivist's section of the county council.

"Their work is now being assessed in order to ascertain the value of the contents as historic records."

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