The search room at Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre opens to the public on the second Saturday of each month. In April 2020 this would be on the 11th of the month which is Easter Saturday. Both the day before this (10th) and the following Monday (13th ) are Bank Holidays and the building will be closed although the search room is closed to the public on a Monday anyway.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many researchers use the Saturday as a ‘bonus’ day and will use the search day over a two day period on a Friday and Saturday when it is open, hence the proposal to move the Saturday opening in April to the following weekend.

The number of service users impacted by any change is likely to be low. The average number of users of the service on a Saturday per month since April 2019 has been 14. Many of these are regular Saturday users so they can be informed during the March Saturday opening session of the change for April.

A decision now also allows time for wider publicity of the change via the website and social media channels.