English Heritage has reacted to our recently expressed concerns about it wanting to increase the maximum number of visitors it can transport at peak times. It has said it’s about efficiency not increasing attendance figures and its planning application statement said so – “The application is not intended to facilitate growth in visitor numbers.”
However, what it is intended to facilitate and what it will facilitate are not the same thing. We still feel that if you take 900 people an hour to the stones instead of 600 then that will mean 50% more people processing round the stones in the following hour – whether that’s what you intended or not.
Incidentally, it’s not just us who are concerned about this matter. See “UNESCO fears English Heritage will milk Stonehenge under pressure for cash” and UNESCO’s specific warning: “Such pressure may result in lowering expenditure, such as specialized or expert personnel, maintenance, standards of archaeological curation, etc., and also in increasing revenues: by channelling in more visitors for shorter times….”
The Heritage Journal 
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16/05/2016 at 19:35
Frank Millar
Here’s your answer why English Heritage need to substantially increase visitor numbers.
EH’s website says “Our target is to become completely self-funding by 2023……During the past 10 years our commercial income has doubled.”
Again quoting from the EH website, self generated income currently accounts for 66% of funding – the gap has been made up by a 20% One off capital grant and 14% Government funding.
So they must increase self generated income by over one third by 2023.
Hence the desire to increase visitor numbers by 50% at Stonehenge and the appearance of Mickey Mouse at Tintagel.