Entrance fee to be charged for next year's Worcester Show
This year voluntary donations were asked for
Visitors to next year’s Worcester Show will have to pay a new entrance fee, it has been agreed.
Cash-strapped Worcester City Council will charge £2 for next year’s Worcester Show – just months after rejecting the same move for August’s event in favour of voluntary donations.
Lib Dem councillor Mel Allcott said a new entrance fee was a “no-brainer” given the council’s financial state.
“I think if you do things for free, people don’t always value them,” she said at the policy and resources committee meeting in the Guildhall on Monday (October 16).
The Worcester Show, which is held every August, attracts as many as 20,000 visitors and includes everything from market stalls to flower and vegetable competitions, live music and performances, dog shows and sports.
For next year’s event to break even, the council would have to charge £4 to all over 16s and need at least 13,400 people to turn up.
As many as 27,000 people would have to attend and pay £2 next year for the event to break even.
Figures reveal this year’s show cost nearly £11,000 more to run compared to the 2022 event – rising to £47,800 – but income also increased from £25,400 to £40,000 leaving a £7,800 shortfall to be covered by the council.
Weeks before this year’s show, the council had been pushing ahead with introducing an entry charge for the free family-friendly event as one way of helping with its worrying budget issues – a move it believed would cause “minimal” issues for visitors.
But when the money-saving scheme was put to a vote, councillors instead scrapped the move to introduce an entrance charge altogether in favour of voluntary donations.
However, the cost of asking people to make a donation for this year’s show was more than double the amount the council actually received in donations – with £7,000 spent on extra measures to accept donations but only received £2,900 from visitors.
The council said the extra thousands were spent on security staff, extra fencing and a marquee.
The city council was facing a £1.7m gap in its books this year – which it has already been agreed will be filled by using its reserves – and bosses expect the gap to grow to nearly £4m in the next five years.