Interest in the Hoard is far too little, too late

FURTHER to my pleas for the council to get active in campaigning to acquire the Stafford-shire Hoard and provide a home for it in Walsall (Advertiser letters, December 10 and January 14), I understand that Councillor Bird and colleagues are going to break their lengthy silence and at least say something.

It seems the leadership has now tabled a Notice of Motion to Council (ie, to itself!) calling for the Hoard to be retained in the kingdom of Mercia (not Walsall or the West Midlands) and for the Government to come up with the money to buy it.

The question is: is this move a sign of belated seriousness, or simply an exercise in damage-limitation and blame-shifting?

As readers may be aware, for some months, the Government Office for the West Midlands (GOWM) has chaired a steering group to oversee work on getting a permanent home for the Hoard in the West Midlands.

I have still not been able to find out whether Walsall Council is a member of this group. What I do know is that the steering group has agreed that Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and the Potteries Museum at Stoke-on-Trent, should bid to acquire the Hoard for the region. Birmingham and Stoke have contributed £100,000 each towards the £4 million cost of acquisition, while so far, Walsall has not even launched a public appeal, let alone contributed a penny.

I have before me copies of two letters to a concerned member of the public from a senior council officer who explains how the New Art Gallery, the obvious and only home for the Hoard in Walsall, and the nearest secure exhibition facility to the site of the find near Brownhills, is an unsuitable venue, except, perhaps for a temporary exhibit.

Translated into plain Walsall, the message appears to be "Look, mate, we're just not interested, so forget it!"

If the interest had been there months ago all it would have taken was a cabinet report and Walsall would have been up there in the race to provide a home for the Hoard.

What we have instead is a Notice of Motion from the Council to itself, asking for yet another Government bail-out which our Tory council obviously knows simply is not going to happen.

Richard Worrall, Walsall.