JOBS are on the line, as Oxford's tourist information centre will not reopen after the lockdown.

The Oxford Visitor Information Centre closed in March due to the Covid-19 lockdown, but the centre had been in a vulnerable financial position for some time.

Experience Oxfordshire (EO), the organisation which ran the centre, blamed a funding cut from Oxford City Council.

All jobs at the centre are now at risk of redundancy.

One of EO’s directors said it was ‘not viable to operate an information centre without public sector subsidy’.

The city council cut its £173,000 annual gran to EO by £20,000 in 2019, then reduced it by a further £25,000 this year, with no grant for next year.

More than 500,000 people used the visitor centre on Broad Street each year, and EO deals with a further 200,000 calls and emails.

A statement from EO said it had inherited a visitor centre which was ‘making substantial losses’ and that there has not been enough income from people using the centre to make up for the shortfall in council funding in recent years.

Christopher Wigg, board director of Experience Oxfordshire said: “We are extremely disappointed that the city council have taken the decision to no longer support Experience Oxfordshire.

“It is simply not viable to operate an information centre without public sector subsidy and there is no information centre in the country that operates without a level of public sector support.”

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Mary Clarkson, cabinet member for the city centre, Covered Market and culture said the council had provided the equivalent of £1.8m funding to EO since 2011 and would continue to allow the organisation to use the visitor centre building rent-free.

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She added: “Oxford City Council is also experiencing significant financial challenges as a result of the pandemic, with a funding shortfall of over £10m this year due to the crisis.

“We are therefore not in a position to spend more Oxford taxpayers’ money funding on a destination management organisation at this time.”

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Lib Dem councillor Liz Wade said Oxford was now the only major UK tourist city without a visitor centre. She said: “We've been warning for the last two years that, if the grant wasn’t restored and increased, the city would lose its flagship visitor information centre.”