Museum fees partly axed after drop in footfall

Controversial admission fees for a city centre museum have been partially abandoned after a reportedly sharp decline in footfall.

Oxford City Council introduced entrance fees at the Museum of Oxford in January for the first time since it opened in 1975, to fill what it said was a gap in its budget.

Since the £4 entry fee was introduced, campaign group Save Our Museum said footfall at the St Aldates attraction had fallen by 70 – 80% compared with 2024/25.

At a meeting last week, the council agreed to row back on some of the changes, with free entry being restored for Oxford residents.

"We always regretted having to introduce charges for local residents," council leader Susan Brown said.

"People should go [to the museum], and now nobody in Oxford will have an excuse not to go there because it will be free again."

The free admission for city residents will initially run as a pilot scheme from 4 January until the end of March, at which point the council will decide whether to make it permanent.

The fees were first introduced at the start of the year to fill a budget gap at the museum, which is subsidised by the city council.

Despite the gap still existing, the council's finance chief Ed Turner said: "We've listened and we've seen what we can do."

Avril Alexander, from the Save Our Museum Campaign, welcomed the move, saying the council had "made a massive mistake in introducing entry fees to a small local museum in a city full of world-renowned free ones".

"We're glad that Oxford residents' voices have been heard and those fees are now being scrapped – hopefully for good," she said.

The group now wanted the council to commit to covering the full costs of the museum "so that staff can focus on rebuilding goodwill, footfall and donations", she added.