The Nottingham Castle could fully re-open in June if councillors give the go-ahead next week. Nottingham City Council had previously been given until the end of June to decide the future of the landmark building in the city centre.
Under proposals announced on Monday, March 13, the council will take the operation of the castle site back into its Museums and Galleries service, which will run it alongside other heritage sites such as Newstead Abbey and Wollaton Hall. If approved, the council said local people as well as visitors will be able to enjoy the city’s key historical site with some events planned from an early as May.
It comes after the board overseeing improvements at the authority listed dozens of instructions which must be followed if it is to avoid any further Government intervention.
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Earlier this year, the council was told that they must "determine the future of Nottingham Castle in line with the commercial strategy and without exposing the council to inappropriate risk", giving a deadline of June 30 for this to be complete. The Nottingham Castle Trust, which had been running the venue since its £33 million revamp, went into liquidation last November and the site has been closed ever since.
It was also recently revealed the cost to the council in terms of lost income and bills to keep the building going had been £593,000 so far. Now, a report to be considered by the council’s Executive Board on Tuesday, March 21, outlines other options, including mothballing the site and initially only reopening the grounds.
But the option to fully reopen is being recommended for approval - with up to £2.1m earmarked in the council’s medium-term financial plan for its operation over the next three financial years. If the recommendation is approved next week, it will trigger an activation period of around three months to recruit and train staff and set up any systems and processes needed for fully reopening the castle.
It is proposed there will be start-up activities from May in the grounds to give people the opportunity to rediscover the site ahead of full reopening. Further details about the proposed programme of activities and pricing structure would follow if a decision is taken to reopen.
Alongside the reopening, the council said it is proposed to undertake a 'lessons learned' exercise as part of an assessment into how to best operate the castle. The local authority said this will help inform future decisions around what would provide the council with the delivery model for the site that allows for the best experience for all visitors.
The decision is being taken after the castle closed last November following the external operator Nottingham Castle Trust declaring itself insolvent. All the features of the redeveloped site will be available to visitors under the council’s proposals.
The City Council’s Portfolio Holder for Leisure, Culture & Planning, Cllr Pavlos Kotsonis, said: “We know there is a lot of love for Nottingham Castle and we were all devastated when it closed last year.
“We committed to looking at ways to reopen the castle as soon as possible after Nottingham Castle Trust went into liquidation and handed the site back to us. This report recommends a way to do that by using the expertise of the council’s well-established Museums and Galleries service, which has previously run the site and has the skills, specialist knowledge and cultural partnership connections to quickly mobilise and successfully animate the site with a programme of activities.
“It is important to get this right and officers have worked tirelessly to achieve that, I am proud of the work done."
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