Nottingham City Council has set out plans which will see Nottingham Castle re-open in June, if given the go-ahead next week.
The Castle has been closed since November 2022 after going into liquidation just twenty months after re-opening following a £33million revamp. During those twenty months the venue and the Nottingham Castle Trust who ran it became embroiled in various issues including accusations of racism and work-place harassment. It was also recently revealed the cost to the council in terms of lost income and bills to keep the building going had been over half a million pounds.
Under the new proposals, 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, it will mean that with some preview events planned from as early as May, local people as well as visitors will once again be able to enjoy the city’s key historical site and that the castle can resume making its contribution to the wider local economy estimated to be valued at £12m to £14m.
A report is to be considered by the council’s Executive Board on Tuesday 21 March (read it here) outlined 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, it is proposed to undertake a lessons learned exercise as part of an assessment into how to best operate the castle. 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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