QUESTIONS have been asked whether a popular city show should be ‘scaled down’ and move as part of a plan to save money.

Cash-strapped Worcester City Council had planned to introduce a new £2 entry fee for the annual Worcester Show this year as a way of saving money but when the move was put to a vote, councillors ditched a charge altogether in favour of a voluntary donation.

On top of scrapping the entrance fee, there have been suggestions of cutbacks at the family-friendly event which could see it return to Gheluvelt Park on a smaller scale as another way of cutting costs.

The last two shows have been held at Pitchcroft, having moved from Gheluvelt Park in 2021, have cost the city council as much as £35,000 with running costs totalling nearly £66,000 and only bringing in just under half that with the city’s taxpayers underwriting the shortfall.

That is without the estimated £10,000 it costs every year for around 700 hours of council staff time that is needed to make sure the show goes ahead.

Green councillor Karen Lewing said the plans for an entry fee seemed “rushed” and asked whether the council would even have enough staff to even prepare next year’s festival given other plans to save money through redundancies.

Cllr Lewing suggested the council could ‘scale back’ the festival to a similar size when it was held in Gheluvelt Park – given the cost of running the show had risen by £11,000 in the two years since it moved to Pitchcroft.

“Would [the fee] be two pounds this year and then inflation goes up, the cost of the show goes up to £50,000 and then we say we can’t do it unless it’s five pounds?” she said at the place and economic development committee meeting in the Guildhall on Tuesday (June 6).

“We know that we are going to have redundancies and if we did a show of this size next year, can we actually say that we will have the staff available?”

The council’s managing director David Blake said the authority might look at ‘doing things differently’ and could downsize the festival next year but it would depend on how much money is saved in the next 12 months.

He said: “I think we will honestly have to wait to see how this year pans out, of what we can and can’t achieve in terms of savings and whether that eventually impacts staff numbers or whether we can make the majority of savings through initiatives such as [the new entry fee] or others.”

It was the first time this year that councillors had been asked to vote on a money-saving measure by the council, which had looked at the new entry fee as a way of cutting the amount the event is subsidised.

The city council has already revealed its worrying budget problems and expects the gaps in its budget to grow to nearly £4m in the next five years.