MPs criticise visitor targets for historic sites

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) set the targets for England in 2005 but had no plan for how they could be achieved and no way of measuring its own contribution towards meeting them,

the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found.

The report said cash-strapped English Heritage instead focused on increasing its income from visitors. Two of the three targets were missed, and they have since been scrapped.

The cross-party committee also raised concern free educational visits to English Heritage sites dropped by 20 per cent over the same period, from around 500,000 to just over 400,000.

The committee urged the quango to focus its efforts on encouraging school visits, and suggested a priority should be better funding for cathedrals to enable them to scrap or reduce entrance charges.

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said: "The truth is that the proportion of the UK population visiting historic sites is already some 70 per cent, an impressive total, and most of the people who don't visit say that they are not interested in doing so. It is hard to see what useful purpose was achieved by setting targets to increase visits from this or that under-represented group."

And it added: "A crucial factor in developing a lifelong interest in historic sites is to be taken to see them as a child. English Heritage should aim to reverse the decline in free educational visits by children to its own sites."