A report to a Council meeting next week reveals that the York Museums Trust still has to raise over £700,000 to meet the cost of its Art Gallery refurbishment project.

The £8m scheme is expected to be completed in 2015 with 60% more exhibition space, improved visitor facilities and a new Centre of Ceramic Arts.

The Museum Gardens were awarded a gold medal by Yorkshire in Bloom. The gardens to the rear of York Art Gallery are to be expanded with three new gardens established.

The Trust is also refurbishing the Debtors Prison at the Castle Museum following a successful £1.1m bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. The first exhibition to be held in these new spaces will be 1914: When the World Changed Forever, a major changing exhibition on the social impact of World War One. This work will begin in November and will be open to the public in June 2014

Overall visitor numbers to York’s museums showed an increase of 2% this summer although much of that is put down to an exhibition of Richard III ‘s reconstructed head.