While admirable, I think it would've been even better if they'd included Margate museum too (a "Save Thanet's Museums" group perhaps). This would attract more people & therefore have a bigger impact.

With the withdrawal of the grant to Museum services TDC no longer has a strategy for Museum services even though it owns an art collection and artefacts worth in excess of £500,000.
TDC’s partner the EKMT is now on the brink of folding with both the Margate Museum and the Ramsgate Museum closed and placed under caretaker conditions while a way forward is worked out. There is a proposal for a “Heritage Association” which if set up correctly as a charity and fits the charity commission criteria for Maritime Heritage, could legally take on all the EKMT loans and acquisitions obtained by the EKMT while under charitable status. The maritime collection under the control of the Heritage Association at Ramsgate would only need to return items loaned from TDC to sever all links with TDC once the clock house is vacated.
There are proposals I believe by the Heritage Association to take on the Margate Museum, which is rather hasty as ownership of artefacts will be an issue. The majority of Margate Museum artefacts are owned by TDC and the remainder acquired by the EKMT while under charitable status. There are two ways to look at this, firstly did TDC place all the items it owns to the charity therefore making all artefacts subject to charity commission rules or did TDC loan the items to the EKMT and paid the EKMT to manage the collection. If the latter is the case and the artefacts are TDC assets, the responsibility for insurance and storage for the collection belongs to TDC. Therefore, TDC will have to come up with a Museum’s policy if the Heritage Association does not want to take on the Margate Museum. Should this happen, TDC would have to pay insurance, storage and caretaker costs for the collection. Taking into consideration the cost of running a small museum there would probably be very little difference to keeping the Margate Museum open if revenue by visitors is taken into consideration.

I can see where you are coming from on that one Peter.

Thanks for the update Tony. It seems the whole issue is a complex one - perhaps a tapered reduction might have been better management? It's too late for that now - we just have to find the best way forward.