Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    BCC
  • Title
    Bedfordshire County Council
  • Date free text
    1889-2009
  • Production date
    From: 1889 To: 2009
  • Creator
    Bedfordshire County Council
  • Admin/biog history
    Created under the Local Government Act 1888 to maintain main roads, county bridges, pay for the police and paupers in the poor law unions and Three Counties Asylum and a miscellany of licencing and regulation. The first members were election on the 24 January 1889 and the first meeting held on the 7th February. The responsibilities of the county council increased over time. The 1902 Education Act gave the council control of all elementary schools in the county except those in Bedford and Luton. 1903 brought the registration of motor vehicles, 1908 Smallholdings and allotments, 1913 county records office founded, 1915 ante-natal work, 1921 adult education, 1924 start of county library service, 1929 minor roads transferred to county council and county council set to take over old poor law functions. 1939 Civil defence, 1944 Education Act enabled primary, secondary and further education to be provided by the council. 1945 County Architect's department set up. 1947 Town & Country Planning Act, Fire Services Act, 1948 county council no longer responsible for hospitals but was given oversight of children and welfare. 1949 Access to Countryside. 1969-74 Bedfordshire Schools reorganised on comprehensive lines. 1970 Social Services Department created out of former Children and Welfare Departments. 1969 moved main offices from Shire Hall, St Paul's Square Bedford to County Hall, Cauldwell Street. 1974 the New County Council was created including the county borough of Luton. In 1996/7 Luton became a unitary authority and left the county council. On the 31st March 2009 the county council was abolished its functions being given to the two new unitary authorities of Central Bedfordshire and Bedford Borough.
  • Scope and Content
    The responsibilities of Bedfordshire County Council changed over time and therefore different classes (sub-fonds) have different time spans. There were major changes to committees and structures in 1947/8, 1973/4 and 1996/7. Some classes consist solely of minutes and agenda papers for committees. Some classes have minutes and papers and additional records. Some classes consist of a variety of records, but no committee minutes and papers. Sub-fonds with references prefixed CC are generally those that cover council-wide activities/issues and include many classes that are working business records and not archives. Other sub-fonds have references that are not prefixed CC but have references that generally stand for the department or committee they relate to e.g. CT for County Treasurer. To complicate things further, in order to add them to a computer based database, some sub-fonds have had to have their references adjusted because the same reference letters had also been allocated to privately deposited collections, e.g. PR, which for Bedfordshire County Council Policy and Resources committee has had to be adjusted to BCC/PR to distinguish it from the PR collection of medieval deeds deposited by a firm of solicitors in 1954. The references on the documents may not have been changed to reflect this adjustment. Not all Bedfordshire County Council records are listed under the BCC fonds. This is generally because they are extensive departmental records that require a complicated hierarchical structure and adding them to the BCC fonds was seen as an unnecessary complication. In some cases they are also classes that were either not exclusively Bedfordshire County Council. In at least one case (CR), the class has continued to be used beyond the abolition of the county council for a service that continued to operate across the whole county. These classes include, but are not limited to: CR (County Records), E (Education), Lei (Leisure Services), SS (Social Services), WW1 and WW2 (war records).
  • Archival history
    Records held by the archives service depend on whether the records were passed to the service by the creating departments. They are therefore incomplete. Having been arranged by committee rather than by function the classification scheme is difficult to navigate. Some classes of records e.g. CCE are active business records and not archives. This is because the archives and records service ran both the active records and archives for the authority and, in an effort to create a comprehensive classification system, the lines of distinction between the two sets of records became somewhat blurred. Cataloguing of records of the county council continues as more records reach the end of their business life and are transferred to the archives.
  • Level of description
    fonds
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