Reader letter: Chichester’s Novium Museum should not house council facilities

I was horrified to read that one suggestion for the relocation of Chichester District Council’s offices is to put ‘customer facing/reception’ facilities in the Novium Museum (Observer, March 31).

For heaven’s sake, this was designed as a museum, not a convenient dumping ground for head-office staff in search of premises.

Some years ago, CDC closed its spacious Tourist Information Centre in South Street, forcing it into a corner of the Novium for its new home and then more recently part was turned into a temporary marketing suite for the sale of the adjoining new flats, Vesta Apartments.

Clearly the Novium is regarded as an expendable space.

As it is, the Novium is drastically short of storage space for its reserve collections, part of which has to be stored off-site at Fishbourne. And this is just 10 years after it was first opened.

What is worse, staff are being forced to be highly selective in accepting donations. No room!

How much of our local heritage is being turned away for lack of space?

The Novium’s dedicated and hard-working staff must feel despair at the inadequacies of the building and the way CDC feels it can treat this precious space.

See also: Culture Spark: Novium Museum preparing for celebration in anniversary year