LEGAL agreements between City of York Council and the people running York's museums are to be re-written following funding cuts earlier this year.

Councillors are planning to overhaul the agreements between them and the York Museums Trust (YMT) which is in charge of the Yorkshire Museum and Gardens, the Castle Museum, and the York Art Gallery, which it leases from the council.

The Trust and council got into hot water earlier in the year over the unpopular decision to start charging York residents for entry.

Now councillors are to start rewriting the legal agreements - as they have cut the funding to the Trust so much they cannot expect the same level of service from the Trust.

On Wednesday night the city council's learning and culture committee agreed to start a review of legal agreements.

The committee's chairman Cllr Dave Taylor said: "It's fair to say the council fell out with the YMT, and the agreements are no longer fit for purpose."

The council's assistant director Charlie Croft told the committee that its previous plans for the museums had been "predicated on a level of funding that is no longer there".

The council could not ask the YMT to go on "as if nothing had changed" and keep reporting back against the same targets, he added.

He spoke to the councillors alongside the YMT's new chief executive Reyahn King, and they told the councillors that current agreements between the Trust and the council were dissuading potential major donors from giving collections to York.

Cllr Janet Looker added: "I think this is very timely. We did reach a very difficult position, as we all know, in the summer which I don't think any of us want to see again.

"It has been known for councils to suddenly sell off quite valuable artefacts, pictures etc and pictures to balance the books. If you were going to give a charitable donation of any size you would want to be quite sure it wasn't going to be sold to balance a short term hole in the council's budget."

Three councillors are now to form a task group to review the various documents that make up the council's legal agreements with the YMT.