Article in the Yorkshire Evening Post here:

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Wakefield-mining-museum-loses-28m.6631882.jp 

Not a straight cut, but £2.8m out of £3.2m funding will be lost over the next few years. It is hoped that new "sponsors" will make up the lost funding.

Now that is one cut i dont agree with
this is our heritage and once it's gone it's gone for ever
the miners made this country
no coal no industrial revolution

What next knock down all the war memorials ?

Conversely - there's no money, so what do you want, a health service or a museum?

Chris.

Conversely - there's no money, so what do you want, a health service or a museum?

Chris.

The way things are going we won't have that either! :guns:

Conversely - there's no money, so what do you want, a health service or a museum?

Chris.

Or a royal wedding (which we will be paying for) or a museum ?
or over seas aid to nuclear countries etc
it's not all about the nhs

On the other hand, there are several non-funded museums that have always had to self finance and still survive.
Like any nationalised organisation, NCM probably has plenty of excess to trim.

I raised this months ago as it was seen coming then....
http://www.aditnow.co.uk/community/viewtopic.aspx?t=4673 

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Conversely - there's no money, so what do you want, a health service or a museum?

Chris.

I want out of the corrupt, undemocratic EUSSR.

I want the government to stop wasting money on foreign aid.

I want them to stop spunking money on crap like bloody crash barriers, PFI initiatives, council chiefs which cost £240k/A and virtually every piece of economy throttling legislation that these collectivist c-units keep spouting.

Trim the pyramid which is the NHS and PCTs so it has concave edges, rather than being a sodding prism.

I want these unfit-for-purpose goal-antagonistic ******* fusion of commies with collectivist EU good think self absorbed cronified tossers to actually get the economy and give it one almighty great big kick, rather than talking about it and spending anyway.

Is that good enough for you? :lol:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11798825 

Some museums get lucky.

Yes
An artistic based museum in London is worth much more funding
Than a smelly, dirty industrial / social history museum up north. :curse:

Well said Stuey....
Well said Rufenig....

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The NPHT get a 1,300th of that budget for Nenthead. These large National Museums have got to be more realistic. How on earth can they spend that much money in a year?
That is a subsidy of more than £26 per visitor

http://www.coal.gov.uk/environmental/england/caphouseminewatertreatmentscheme.cfm 
Pumping?

Just google the museum and you will find several expensive and necessary maintenance projects like reinstating shafts.

I suspect the NPHT sites are all self-draining.

What is the funding situation for the other two national coal mining museums (Lady Victoria for Scotland; Big Pit for Wales)? Big Pit is part of the National Museum of Wales and ao seems pretty safe - though there has yet to be a public pronouncement on the percentage funding cutback that NMW will experience and how it will affect each site. How is Lady Victoria funded and what is the outlook?

Seems that 'national' in the title of a museum is not a guarantee of adequate funding unless the museum is actually part and parcel of an established 'national'. When Big Pit wa staken on by NMW the Welsh Assembly gave NMW an ongoning increase to its funding to cover the costs of operating Big Pit. Presumably something similar would be necessary to induce the National Museum of Science & Industry (the old Science Museum) to take on Caphouse... which seems most unlikely in the current economic climate.

Yes I remember how close we got to losing the National Railway Museum.... pay to go in and see what you and your predecessors had already paid for = Nobody bothered!

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If you recall until Government stepped in NCM was about to close. Seems to me the one way to offset savings at both here and Big Pit would be to charge for the underground trip. The running of a winder, inspections , air testing, ventilation and maintence must be the main burden on both sites.

Lady Victoria in Scotland never had an underground experience and as such its visitor numbers are a lot lower its also quite difficult to find and not that much tourism in the area. The arty types who visit Edinburgh are not your typical Industiral archaeolgist tourist type. The museum itself is really good and has an amazing library

Mike

If you recall until Government stepped in NCM was about to close. Seems to me the one way to offset savings at both here and Big Pit would be to charge for the underground trip. The running of a winder, inspections , air testing, ventilation and maintence must be the main burden on both sites.

I don't known the details of Caphouse but Big Pit, in comon with the rest of the National Museum of Wales, receives a Welsh Assembley Government grant to offset the loss of revenue caused by not charging for entry - this was introduced a few years agio when the WAG voted for free entry to national museums. If entry was charged for (and as the underground tour is about 50% of the museum, charging for the tour would amount to charging for entry), that annual grant would have to be returned - giving no advantage to charging. Bit of a poser how to increase income at such a site!

If you recall until Government stepped in NCM was about to close. Seems to me the one way to offset savings at both here and Big Pit would be to charge for the underground trip. The running of a winder, inspections , air testing, ventilation and maintence must be the main burden on both sites.

I don't known the details of Caphouse but Big Pit, in comon with the rest of the National Museum of Wales, receives a Welsh Assembley Government grant to offset the loss of revenue caused by not charging for entry - this was introduced a few years agio when the WAG voted for free entry to national museums. If entry was charged for (and as the underground tour is about 50% of the museum, charging for the tour would amount to charging for entry), that annual grant would have to be returned - giving no advantage to charging. Bit of a poser how to increase income at such a site!

Well surely a reduced grant is simply offset by charging for the only thing the vast majority turn up for which is the underground experience. I am pretty certain that is the case as we find at Snailbeach the days we open Roberts level through free local advertsiing we are inundatedwith visitors most have little or no interest in the the remaining site which is of considerable national importance with a range of preserved engine houses and a myriad of preserved buildings

Mike

There is also the political aspect of the Welsh Assembly Government haveing decreed some years ago that all national museums in Wales should be free entry - on the basis that the good people of Wales having paid for the museums once through their taxes should not have to pay a second time when they visit them. No politico wants to be the one who reverses that decision.

The trouble with starting to charge would very likely be that thye reduced attendances would reflect in shop and cafe profits so that even if charging for entry or for access to part of the mine (e.g. the underground tour) offset the reduced grant, the reduction in takings on other activities (food, gift shop) would leave the museum a little worse off than it started.
Also, the main criteria by which 'success' is judged in museums (and other heritage / culture attractions too) is visitor numbers. Anything that significantly diminishes visitor numbers (such as going from free entry to charging) is pretty much a no-no.

I take your point about free entry being a magnet for relatively uninterested visitors who only want the exciting underground bit and aren't interested in the surface of a mine. Every mining museum I've visited that has an underground tour has seemed to have fewer people looking at the surface than went underground.