The Royal Photographic Society’s collection at the National Media Museum in Bradford is to be moved to London in “an appalling act of cultural vandalism” after museum grandees decided to ignore protests over its relocation.

The move will see 312,000 objects from the RPS collection transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London to create an “international photography resource centre”. A further 85,000 could also be moved.

The decision, described as “devastating” was discussed at a board meeting in London on Wednesday by the trustees of the Science Museums Group (SMG), which owns the NMM.

Two Bradford MPs who demanded the transfer of objects be halted expressed their outrage that the pleas of 27,000 people who signed a petition had been ignored.

Judith Cummins, MP for Bradford South, vowed to fight the decision made by an “elite” board of trustees 200 miles away who had no affinity with the people of Bradford.

Cummins said the unelected board ran “rough-shod over the legitimate fears and wishes of local people”. She warned of a significant backlash. “I’m devastated by the decision ... It’s frankly a complete disgrace that the SMG have ignored over 27,000 people who signed the petition calling for the transfer to be stopped. Worse still we now know that even more items are under threat.”

Cummins has launched a campaign to reverse the decision and is raising the matter with culture minister Ed Vaizey.

She added: “We’re faced with an elite group of unrepresentative trustees, who have absolutely no link, no understanding and no affinity to Bradford or the wider region.



“The trustees aren’t democratically accountable and can frankly do whatever they like over 200 miles away in the leafy suburbs of South Kensington, London. This isn’t fair and it isn’t right and I intend to fight it all the way.”

The transfer will include 270,000 images, 26,000 books and periodicals, 10,000 items of archival materials and 6,000 pieces of camera equipment.

Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West, said: “I am disappointed that the trustees felt unable to retain and digitise the RPS collection. I’m not convinced the board understood the passionate concern of local people.”

However, officials at Bradford museum said they were shifting its focus from media to science and technology and had acquired “unique and culturally important objects” from the work of scientists including Sir John Herschel and Sir Charles Wheatstone from the Science Museum collection.

Dame Mary Archer, a scientist specialising in solar power conversion, who chaired Wednesday’s meeting, said: “We want to assure the people of Bradford that the aim of the Science Museum Group, like that of the council, is to improve the museum, put it on a sound footing, and to shift its emphasis towards inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers, while still celebrating the city’s key role in film, photography and television.”

The plan to move the photos from Bradford to the V&A in London was heralded by the National Media Museum on 2 February as a “historic agreement … providing the public and independent researchers with a peerless facility.”

Others saw it differently, pointing out that it only benefited Londoners. One Bradford councillor derided the plan as “an appalling act of cultural vandalism”; Richard Morrison, a cultural critic at the Times, dismissed it as “lunacy” and “Londoncentric nonsense”.

Almost everyone on the 16-strong SMG trust is based in London or the south-east, including the former BBC chairman Lord Grade, Guardian columnist Matthew d’Ancona and Dame Fiona Woolf, former lord mayor of London.

The NMM is considering changing its name to the Science Museum of the North in 2017 to reflect its new focus on STEM (science, technology engineering and maths).

The move away from photography has two “powerful motives”, according to Jo Quinton-Tulloch, NMM’s director. “The need to focus our activity and our limited resources on ... the science and technology of light and sound, and to ensure that those collections that don’t directly help us to do that – like the RPS collection – find a home where they can be accessed and enjoyed by the public and researchers alike,” she wrote in a blog.

She said that far from splitting up the 3m-strong photographic collection held by the NMM, the move was a reunion for some of the images, which were once part of a single collection at the 19th century South Kensington Museum before its split into the Science Museum and the V&A.

The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television was set up in 1983, and rebranded as the National Media Museum in 2006.

In June 2013, the Science Museum Group threatened to shut it but relented following protests, and intervention by minister Ed Vaizey.

None of the items earmarked for the V&A are currently on public show in Bradford, the Guardian understands. They are accessible only via prior appointment and just 500 people looked at the collection in the last year.

The NMM will retain collections that support an understanding of the development of photographic processes, the cultural impact of photography and have specific relevance to Bradford. It has received investment of around £2.5m this year for its increased focus on science and will open a new interactive gallery in spring 2017.