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Funding for London museums has increased enormously in recent years. The lottery has contributed hundreds of millions of pounds for capital developments; central government revenue in the tens of millions goes to funding free admission to the national museums and galleries. The research described in this paper focuses on museums that opened lottery-funded capital projects in 2000, and on the relationship between this additional funding and museum attendance. The authors found that the extra money led to extra visits-and for the first time attempted to calculate what those visits cost. This research also looks at whether people chose improved museums over other museums, and briefly investigates the impact on attendance of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease and the downturn in tourism following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

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Policy and legislation are some of the most important factors shaping the public environment within which museums work. However, “policy‐engaged” people are not that common in the museum sector, and even the more able managers are primarily partisan for their own institutions and see any benefits of government policy as somehow being “accidental windfalls.” This chapter addresses this problem by drawing on policy studies in providing a comprehensive analysis of English museums and the regulatory conditions under which they operate. After a historical background to the legislation and regulation governing museums in England, including the Thatcher and Major governments up to 1997, it focuses on New Labour's policies as they applied to museums up to 2010, and then analyzes the current Coalition government. It goes on to explore three of the most iconic manifestations of English museums’ regulatory frameworks introduced over the past 20 years – the National Lottery, launched in 1994, free admission to the national museums (from 1999), and Renaissance in the Regions (from 2001) – assessing their original intentions, their development over the long term and their perceived significance. The changing policy paradigms for museums reflect broader trends within government thinking, but evidence on the development of evidence‐based policy is slight. The chapter concludes that in order to earn the respect of government and be treated more seriously, museum professionals must engage more critically with government policy frameworks so as not to become passive victims of them.