How Breckland Council Secured 130,000 Microfiche Records and Eliminated Reliance on Ageing Reader Equipment
May 14th, 2026Executive Summary
Breckland Council faced a growing problem: thousands of irreplaceable planning and building control records were stored on ageing microfiche, with readers becoming very difficult to maintain and the fiche itself deteriorating. Pearl Scan digitised 130,000 microfiche and 35,000 paper files – nearly seven million images – across 9 months, giving the council permanent, searchable access to its statutory archive and eliminating all dependency on legacy reading equipment.
At a Glance
Sector Local Government: Public Sector
Organisation: Breckland Council, Norfolk, United Kingdom.
Project Duration: 13 months
Challenge: Deteriorating microfiche records, failing reader equipment, and statutory retention obligations
Solution: Full microfiche and paper document digitisation, metadata indexing, OCR, and scan-on-demand file recall service
Volume: Processed 130,000 microfiche + 35,000 paper files; (circa. 7 x million images) across 500 boxes
Key Result: Complete digital archive accessible 24/7 via Pearl Cloud; zero business disruption during digitisation with our file-recall service.
Microfiche Digitised
130,000
Images Scanned
7,000,000
File Recall Turnaround
24hr
The Challenge
As a local authority, Breckland Council is legally obligated to retain planning and building control records indefinitely. For decades, much of this archive had been stored on microfiche – a format that was serviceable when the records were created, but had become a serious liability.
Microfiche readers were ageing out of supportable condition. Replacement parts were increasingly difficult to source, and repair contractors were scarce. The council faced a near-term scenario in which staff would be unable to access the archive at all – a significant risk for an authority that regularly needs to respond to planning enquiries, appeals, and legal requests.
Compounding the equipment risk, the physical microfiche itself was beginning to show signs of deterioration. Once fiche degrades past a certain threshold, the information it carries is lost permanently. The council also held a substantial volume of paper planning files – many in active or semi-active use that carried the same retrieval and security risks inherent in physical storage.
The council needed a contractor capable of digitising both formats at scale, maintaining business-as-usual access to documents throughout the process, and delivering a cloud-based solution that staff could access directly.
The Solution
Pearl Scan was awarded Breckland Council’s Corporate Scanning Tender Contract following a competitive procurement process. The engagement covered the full digitisation lifecycle: collection, preparation, microfiche scanning, bulk file scanning, indexing, quality assurance, cloud deployment, and ongoing support.
Proof of Concept and Technical Alignment
Before main production began, Pearl Scan worked alongside council teams to prepare and test samples from each document type and department. This proof-of-concept phase confirmed that scanning parameters, metadata fields, file structures, and Pearl Cloud configurations all met the council’s technical specification, ensuring production could proceed without interruption or costly rework.
Keeping the Council Running
With 130,000 microfiche slides in transit to Pearl Scan’s facility, the council still needed day-to-day access to planning records. Pearl Scan established a dedicated file recall service: council staff could request any document by secure portal and receive a digital copy uploaded to Pearl Cloud within 24 hours. This meant zero operational disruption across the entire 13-month programme.
Digitisation Methodology
Microfiche was processed tray-by-tray: each tray was scanned, indexed, and quality checked before upload, while the next was already in production. Paper files were sequenced in order of departmental priority, so the documents most urgently needed by the council were made available first. Every file, microfiche and paper alike – was captured at 300dpi and output as a multi-page PDF.
Metadata, OCR, and Cloud Access
Each record was indexed with Reference Number and Parish/Location as primary metadata fields, with variations accommodated for each department’s specific requirements. Full optical character recognition was applied to every PDF, making the entire archive text-searchable. The complete digital collection was uploaded to Pearl Cloud, with a dedicated cloud environment created for each council department.
Quality Assurance
Every tray and box underwent structured quality assurance: a statistically representative sample from each batch was reviewed for image quality, metadata accuracy, and file completeness. Any batch failing the quality threshold was re-processed in full, and the surrounding batches subjected to expanded sampling to confirm the issue was isolated.
Secure Disposal
On completion of the digitisation programme, all physical microfiche and paper files were securely stored for six months before disposal. Destruction was carried out in accordance with BS 15713, providing the council with a documented, auditable chain of custody from original record to certified destruction.
The Results
The project delivered a permanent, legally admissible digital archive covering the entirety of Breckland Council’s Planning and Building Control records. Key outcomes included:
- 130,00 microfiche frames digitised
- 35,000 paper files digitised across 500 boxes
- Zero business disruption – 24-hour file recall maintained throughout the project
- Complete elimination of microfiche reader dependency
- Searchable, indexed digital archive accessible 24/7 via Pearl Cloud, with separate departmental environments
- All scanning compliant with BS 10008 (Evidential Weight and Legal Admissibility of Electronic Information)
- Physical records securely destroyed to BS 15713 on completion
- Ongoing relationship: Breckland Council continues to use Pearl Scan’s digitisation services on an ad hoc basis beyond the original contract term
