About Me

The National Conservation Service is a unique non-profit membership organisation for collecting institutions that do not have conservation staff.  Full membership provides the support of an Accredited Conservator to work on site with custodians to assess, plan and help implement conservation improvements for their collections, such as building developments, environmental monitoring and protection, collection needs assessments, conservation-related documentation for Archives and Museums Accreditation.  In addition to the advice provided by our network of Associates, all Accredited and Registered practices, we also operate as a referral service for studio projects and run three archival conservation studios, in Mayfair, Hackney and Oxfordshire.  We provide a conservation-managed storage scheme with our partners Restore PLc, at Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire, monitoring and overseeing the stored collections of c.70 institutions.  The projects staff team is currently 10 conservators, three of whom are ACR Accredited.  NCS provides a free environmental monitoring scheme for institutions and has launched a new Product Testing service to offer an updated and analytically more sophisticated version of Oddy testing for display and storage materials.  Details of these services can be found on our website www.ncs.org.uk

NCS Associates currently work with nearly 100 Full member institutions throughout England, Scotland and Wales and support a further 60 institutions under Supporting membership.

Chris is managing director for NCS. He has been a conservator and conservation manager for over 30 years, working in the heritage sector widely, with a focus in the archive and library worlds and in museums and galleries. Former public sector roles have included Head of Conservation & Collection Care at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and Director of Collection & Programme Services for the Tate galleries. He has published, lectured and taught in a range of specialist fields, notably building and storage environments, parchment manuscripts, archival seals and plastic photographic negatives.  Chris founded NCS in 2009/10 after a research project as a Senior Fellow at University of the Arts, London. He is currently Chairman of the British Standards Institution's committee responsible for BS4971:2017 Conservation & Care of Archive and Library Collections (and formerly for the 2012 review of BS5454).  Active in Europe, Chris led the work to develop EN 16893:2018 Specifications for Buildings, which replaces the now withdrawn BS5454 and is convenor for the EN replacement of PAS 197 due to complete soon.  Chris is adviser to Lincoln and Salisbury Cathedrals for the care of their 1215 Magna Cartas of King John and Hereford for its 1217 Magna Carta of Henry III.