Heritage campaigners have called on people to "get behind" a community-led archives group.

With the strapline of "Keeping local history local", the Lowestoft & District Independent Archive (LADIA) organisation is continuing with its ambition of providing and managing a "well-stocked records archive and local studies
learning centre" in the town.

It comes as the Save Our Record Office group - who were formed in 2018 to campaign against Suffolk County Council's decision to move historic archives from Lowestoft Record Office to Ipswich - is hanging up its placards.

However, with the LADIA organisation incorporating the SORO group, members are upbeat about the future.

Members of LADIA (Lowestoft And District Independent Archive) organisation in Lowestoft. Picture: LADIAMembers of the SORO group at the wind-up meeting in Lowestoft. Picture: LADIA (Image: LADIA)

Aviation historian Bob Collis, who chairs the LADIA group, said the SORO committee had "reluctantly taken the decision" to wind up the group after Suffolk County Council confirmed the closure of both the Bury branch of Suffolk Archives and the local studies library remaining in Lowestoft.

With both offices closing at the end of August the remaining material will be transferred to The Hold in Ipswich.

The controversial move, which the county council said was necessary for the long-term preservation of historic archives, sparked a 7,300 name petition, concerns from three Suffolk town councils as well as a storm of protests from heritage groups, historians and authors.

Speaking at a final meeting at Desmond's in London Road South this month, Mr Collis said: "Practically none of the 1,500 document collections previously transferred to Ipswich have been digitised, meaning anyone from here, and now Bury will have to make the journey to Ipswich to see original archives."

Mr Collis urged the public and local councils to get behind the LADIA group as it represented the best chance of establishing a fully functioning independent archives group "to keep our precious local archives where they belong".

As LADIA is currently negotiating a lease with Colby Commercial to operate from the Old Court Buildings on Old Nelson Street, LADIA office manager Carole Barnard, who was one of the early SORO group members, said she was "very sad" that that SORO was being wound up.

"It has been a big part of our lives for six years," she said.