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Contribution of local museums

Statistics on the contribution of local museums

Arts Council England (ACE) Data

ACE published an Annual Museum Survey: Five-year trends analysis report in March 2025 looking at survey data from 2019 to 2024.

Among the Key findings:

• “Opening hours have shown a gradual and sustained recovery since the pandemic. However, opening hours in more than a third (36%) of museums are down from 2019/20”.
• “While opening hours have recovered, visitor numbers are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels”.
• Museums were open for an average of 1,560 hours over the 2019/20 year falling to 375 hours in 2020/21 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. An average of 1,504 hours in 2023/24 were recorded.
• “Half of museums have seen their visit numbers drop by more than 10% since the pandemic, one in four (27%) have seen them increase by more than 10%”.
• Staffing numbers have changed little since 2019/20, however contract hires as a proportion of hires is increasing from 12% in 2019/20 to 23% in 2023/24.
• “Museum volunteer numbers have generally returned to pre-pandemic levels but 2 in 5 museums report lower numbers of volunteers”.
• “Half of museums have increased admissions income by more than 25% over the last 5 years. Just 8% of museums have seen their admissions income fall by that level over the same period”.
• “Average museum income in 2021/22 was £120k, significantly higher than the level in 2019/20 (£68k) and 2023/24 (£83k)”.
• Average expenditure in 2019/20 was £76k compared with £91k in 2023/24
• 40% of museums received a public subsidy in 2023/24, compared to 36% in 2019/20.

ACE has also published a report in January 2024 looking at levels of public investment in museums. ACE has also invested £479.4 million in museums from 2018/19 to 2024/25.

Association of Independent Museums data

The Association of Independent Museums (AIM) regularly publishes reports on the Economic Impact of the Independent Museum sector. The latest report 2024 Economic Impact Key Findings report (PDF)  provides data for 2023.

The findings of the report are estimates based on a survey of AIM members.

Among the key findings:

• “Independent museums contributed nearly £900 million to the UK economy, directly and indirectly in 2023”.
• They were visited by nearly 20 million people, supported by 4,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff. In 2019 it was 6,000 FTE staff.
• There were 38,900 regular volunteers in the independent museum sector, and these volunteers contributed more than half a million (almost 518,000) volunteer days in 2023. In 2019 there were 34,500 volunteers contributing 494,000 volunteer days.
• Independent museums attracted more than 19.5 million visitors in 2023 based on the survey findings, and of these, it is assumed that around 14.6 million are adult visitors. In 2019, it was 24.5 million and 18.4 million respectively.
• The survey results from the report show that of the 19.5 million visitors, around 8.9 million are local visitors, whilst 10.6 million are day/overnight visitors from further afield. In 2019 there were 24 million visitors of which 14 million were local.
• It is estimated that the overall (gross) spend of these visitors is more than £497 million, and much of this expenditure will contribute to the local economies in the places where independent museums are located.
• Based on the survey results from the report, it is estimated that most of this visitor spending (more than £279 million) takes place off-site – i.e., outside of the museums themselves and in the local economies and communities where the museums are based.

Museum closures

Birbeck College of the University of London have produced a Mapping Museums database covering 4,000 museums with a report on museum closures from 2000 to 2025.

The report notes (PDF) that in the 1970s and 80s there was a large increase in the number of UK museums and that growth continued in the nineties.

Since 2000, 870 new museums opened and around 530 museums closed.

Since 2000, there were a number of years where closures matched or exceeded the number of openings.

Local authority museum closures

Since 2000, a 139 local authority museums have closed with 10 local authorities that had museums in 2000 now having none. The most common reason for closure was finance.

For local authority museums it was funding cuts while for independent museums it was the rising costs of running museums.

Local authority spending on museums

The table below shows net current expenditure on museums and galleries since 2009/10. Local authority net current expenditure covers total spending financed through central government grants, council tax, business rates, and so on, less additional income from sales, fees, charges, and other sources.

Sources:

MHCLG, Local authority revenue expenditure and financing

HMT, GDP deflators at market prices, and money GDP December 2025

Nomis, Population estimates - local authority based by single year of age

Since 2009/10, net current expenditure has fallen 12% and 40% in cash and real terms respectively. Per capita spending in the same period has fallen from £6.22 to £3.30 a decrease of £2.92.

Government support for local museums

England

Following calls from the sector for emergency funding to ease financial pressures on local museums, in February 2025 the government announced a package of funding for 2025-26. The package included two funding measures to support local museums:

• A new £20 million Museum Renewal Fund, distributed by Arts Council England, “to invest in cherished local, civic museums, supporting them to expand access to their Collections and programmes, to continue serving as trusted custodians of our heritage, sparking national creativity and imagination”. The 75 recipients of the fund were announced in October 2025.
• A fifth round of Arts Council England’s Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND), which would distribute £25 million to “support museums across the country to undertake vital infrastructure projects, and tackle urgent maintenance backlogs”.

In addition to this, Arts Council England provided around £44 million of investment into core support for local museums in 2025-26, alongside the government’s Museums VAT Refund Scheme and Museums and Galleries Exhibitions Tax Relief. For the latter, a 2024 report by Art Fund found that local authority-run museums were less likely to access this due to the need to create a trading company to claim.

In a statement made on 22 January 2026, Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed the government has committed to investing £1.5 billion in capital funding for arts and culture over the course of this Parliament, stating that the funding will “support more than 1,000 projects to restore and renew cultural buildings, protect local museums, upgrade libraries, and strengthen the cultural infrastructure that anchors communities across England.”

Wales

The Welsh Government published its Priorities for Culture strategic document in May 2025, which outlines its priorities for arts, museums, libraries, archives, and the historic environment sectors. Following this, the government launched the Priorities for Culture Capital Grant Funding scheme, which offers funding grants for cultural organisations, including local authority and independent museums.

In December 2025, the Welsh Government announced an £8.94 million funding boost for museums, archives, libraries and cultural institutions across Wales. A further £900,000 will be available for local-sector support until Autumn 2026. This announcement also included £1.9 million for 15 projects “to help build capacity in local museums, archives and library services”

Scotland

In the draft budget for 2026-27, the Scottish Government confirmed a further £4 million in funding for the Museum Futures sector sustainability programme over the next year, having previously committed to a £100 million a year increase in arts and culture funding by 2028-29. The Museum Futures scheme was launched in July 2025 by the Scottish Government, Museums Galleries Scotland, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the long-term sustainability of Scotland’s accredited and non-accredited museums.

Northern Ireland

In July 2025, the Department for Communities published the Heritage, Culture and Creativity Programme Purpose and Framework. The document lays out the direction and purpose of the Heritage, Culture and Creativity programme, which includes plans to update the Northern Ireland Museum Policy (last published in 2011). The first phase of the programme includes the review and renewal of museum policies, amongst others.

In summer 2025, the Department for Communities launched the Local Museums Small Capital Grant Programme in partnership with NI Museums Council. The 10 museums awarded a share of the £80,000 grant were announced in October 2025.

Further reading:

• Museums Association, England’s civic museums call for new £120m-a-year investment, 24 February 2026
• English Civic Museums Network, A Vision for English Civic Museums: Current State Analysis and Evidence of Impact, 23 February 2026
• Art Fund, UK public rallies behind local museums: Survey shows strong demand for support, 25 June 2025
• Art Fund, Survey highlights huge public support for UK museums, 9 May 2024