A Merseyside museum which has been losing hundreds of thousands a year in operating costs is set to close.

Spaceport, in Seacombe Ferry Terminal, will likely be turned in to a new children’s science museum.

Currently the museum aims to take visitors on ‘an inspirational journey through space’.

But a Liverpool City Region report shows visitor numbers at the Spaceport have dropped from 96,000 a year a decade a go to just 36,000 a year.

The site has also had an average operating loss of £250,000 a year since 2005.

The report, which will be considered at a meeting on Friday, will propose the combined authority contributes £6.6m towards the transformation of the site.

Yorkshire’s Eureka! National Children’s Museum will serve as a model for the transformation of the Spaceport site – and the charity behind that museum will lead the project.

Their involvement comes after Merseytravel, which owns the building, invited operators to propose new uses for the building.

The combined authority report says: “The proposal is to open a new museum in Liverpool based at the Seacombe ferry terminal, Wirral.

“The museum will focus on promoting Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (“STEAM”) activities for children in the Liverpool City Region (“LCR”).

“The proposed science and discovery centre will build on the

successful experience of Eureka! National Children’s Museum in Halifax.

“The Museum will target a broad range of visitors and the core audience will be children aged 6-14.”

The total cost of the new museum at Seacombe is estimated to be £11.75m.

As well as the combined authority funding Eureka! has also secured £3m from the national Inspiring Science Fund.

A summary of the business case for the new museum projects that it could draw 187,000 visitors a year.

Eureka! opened in 1992 and now attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.