Sale of Nottingham Castle and Wollaton Hall rejected as charity to run them

Nottingham City Council has already started the process of setting up a charity trust to run sites like Nottingham Castle and Wollaton Hall after the sale of the sites was rejected. The Labour-run authority's effective declaration of bankruptcy in November 2023 prompted concern that the council could sell off its key cultural sites, which also include Newstead Abbey.

Former leader David Mellen said nothing was off the table, though argued that such sites brought significant value to Nottingham. A report first published in July mooted the establishment of a charitable trust to run sites like the Castle instead and the idea has again been presented in budget plans for the next financial year just released by the council.

Yet because the proposal on setting up a charity to run sites like the Castle was one of several not requiring public consultation, work has already got underway. The city council published a report late on Wednesday (December 11) confirming that it had approved the establishment of a charitable development trust and a council-controlled exhibitions company to run its museums and galleries service.

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The decision is set to come into force on Thursday (December 19) if it is not challenged and the council says work on setting up the trusts will begin before the end of the current financial year in April. The authority confirmed that it considered a range of other options for its museums and galleries, including the sale of them.

Discussing why the charity trust model had instead been chosen, the city council's new report says: "The establishment of these new entities will allow the service to leverage a number of financial benefits and income streams which are not currently accessible, or to which the service has limited access only as part of a local authority. These reliefs and additional income opportunities will enable a significant reduction in the need for council revenue subsidy and will deliver savings over the next five years."

As well as the opportunity for external sources of funding to largely cover the running of the sites, other benefits of the charitable trust would include exemption from corporation tax, VAT exemption, business rates relief and the application of Gift Aid - where the museums could claim an extra 25p for every £1 they receive. The charitable trust model is already used in cities like Leeds and Manchester.

The running of Nottingham Castle by a charity trust would mark yet another change of management for the site. The castle had been run since 1878 by Nottingham City Council until 2018, when it closed for a £31 million transformation.

Control was then handed over to the Nottingham Castle Trust in May 2019, with the venue reopening in the summer of 2021. After just over a year of operation, with issues including an alleged racist incident and complaints over ticket prices, the trust went into liquidation in November 2022 and the council took back control - reopening the site in the summer of 2023.

Asked if a new charity trust arrangement could end up presenting similar problems to the Nottingham Castle Trust, the city council's deputy leader Ethan Radford previously said: "Completely different, the only similarity being the word 'trust'."

All the new budget plans laid out by the council will be discussed by a meeting of top councillors on December 17, before the final budget is presented for approval in March. Overall, the city council wants to save £1.1 million from its museums and galleries service over the coming years.