March 2026 including Notts CC budget meeting notes

Is it March? Time seems to be standing still so much is happening.

The international news is appalling particularly for those of us who have friends or family in the area. I am sad to admit I have reached the point where I feel that I have no real idea what is going on anymore, as the news and stories keeps shifting so much. But thinking locally the war is likely to have its largest impact on the most vulnerable people in Nottinghamshire and we need to be thinking about that now. This is one reason why the recent effective cuts to the Nottinghamshire County Council budget are so worrying (see below).

On national news, I am shocked by the changes to trial by jury. I understand that “Justice delayed is justice denied” but as I understand this problem dates from 2020 and there must be other solutions that could probably be achieved faster than passing this bill. We don’t solve NHS waiting lists by deciding not to treat people with non-life threatening conditions.

Recently we ran a local survey on a Town Council for West Bridgford. The results will be shared soon but idea seems to have been very well received by residents. We need Local Government Reorganization to have one council running all our vital, interconnected services, and we need a Town Council organising hyperlocal neighbourhood affairs.

Notts County Council Budget Meeting

The Thursday before last was the budget meeting at County Council. I have put my speech below.. sorry it is bullet pointed but that was how I wrote it.

At the time I couldn’t really see the wood for the trees. We are a very inexperienced and tiny group and in fact we all work- normally we would have enough members to have councillors specialising in each area of the council’s work (portfolio) and we would also have had two members of fully time staff to work through the documents in detail. Because of the terrible results last May which saw more than a century of Labour councillor experience lost, we had to manage with a little bit of help from our friends.I was so happy that we arrived at the meeting with a fairly complete understanding of the budget, that I missed the key point, which is that I think there is a reasonable chance that this budget will either bankrupt Notts CC in the next two years, unless it ends up being bailed out by Local Government Reorganisation. Previously I have said that it was hard to pin mistakes on the Reform leadership since (apart from the flags) they hadn’t really done much. But this budget is their choices and their mistakes.

This week we have had an email from Care England pointing out that new administration’s approach to fees is likely to end up causing problems in the local market for care (and they are offering to limit the rise in care fees in several ways. Insufficient budgets are imprudent as wasting money. Ultimately they are playing with the lives of the most vulnerable.

Here are the notes I made for my speech (sorry it is in note form and bullet points but I am rushing to get this out before our next meeting!).

• Thanks the officers and councillors who have worked on the budget and the alternative budget. Thanks to officers for helping us to understand and comment on this budget
• Across the whole budget we recognise the pressures caused by the government’s increase in the National Living Wage and projected pay rises and welcome these as they go a very small way to addressing the inequality in our county. 
• Now I am going to consider each portfolio in turn

Adult Social Care

• Everyone welcomes the focus on prevention but are the £10M of savings realistic?
• I am concerned about the increased charges to users- which hit the most vulnerable in our community.
• You talk about
  • optimizing care packages
  • Technology at scale (which means digital sensors in old people’s houses to check if they fall over etc)
• These are easy words but how can you achieve these?  I am aware of older people who really reject having technology in their homes
• What are you planning to do different next year to this year that will realise these savings?  There is a theme of this budget.. it feels to me like it is based on a wing and a prayer

Children

• Fortunately this government are underwriting the SEND overspend, and hopefully this will allow the council to provide better, more local and less bureaucratic service for families which we all seem to agree on
• On the broader budget I cant agree more with Cllr Green on the shocking situation of councils being fleeced by some private companies who are making large profits on the back of looking after our most vulnerable children. And I’d point out that there is a similar issue in housing and the health too, nationally and locally.
• Your proposal for preventative work is good and I always welcome long term working, but wont it take longer than 1year to achieve benefits and savings? In fact aren’t changes are likely to cost more in the first year
• How are the planned reduction in Social Work staffing costs to be achieved ? I wonder if it is by reducing agency staff but what measures are planned to improve the conditions of directly employed staff to encourage agency staff to come on the books?

Environment

• There is no mention of environment in the Council’s programme of work: by this I don’t just mean proposals for reducing GHGs but even any mention of increasing green spaces or reducing pollution which are all so important for our health and wellbeing today and in the future. It seems that this wasn’t an oversight but was intentional.
• You have removed the entire outdoor education budget, just at a time we want to help children off their screens. This is the only opportunity some children get to appreciate our green spaces but now it is gone.
• However we do welcome the fact that you recognise the benefits of insulating buildings  and we welcome the Tory proposal for solar PV on buildings
• But you are halving of Carbon management budget, and completely cutting of Green Investment Fund, Trees for Climate, Green initiatives-Energy saving.
• Now before anyone starts saying “What about China?” to me.. China had aimed for peak carbon by 2030 but in fact their emissions have been flat since early 2024 and are now falling. I don’t know why they have pushed forward on this, but I expect they recognise that reducing carbon makes them more resilient and self sufficient as well as protecting our them from pollution as well as future proofing Nottinghamshire and our planet. We want all these benefits in Nottinghamshire too.

Transport

• We welcome the plan to encourage integrated transport to support the use of local facilities (dare I suggest we could call this 15 minute cities?)
• We do support Tories proposal additional parking enforcement vehicles as this is a major issue for all our residents.
• We note here that money has been provided from central govt for active travel money. Please can you confirm that some of it is going to be used to repair the greenway from Cotgrave to RoT (which is recreational, not for local services)?
• Where is the budget for repairing and replacing the flags.. ? (Flags are for public occasions, to unify people. The response from my residents suggests that the flags on the lampposts are having precisely the opposite effect.

Potholes

• I have some sympathy for you having to pick up the poison chalice of potholes. This problem is caused by underinvestment in part arising from national Tory austerity and in part arising from a local Tory stop-go policy with Via
• There is only £1M in budget for litigation related to roads . Im trying to get to the bottom of how council handles these liabilities at the moment for a resident but this seems like to low, you are trusting to luck
• Fortunately you have an extra £47M from the mayor and govt to try to deal with this but residents expect this to be used to repair potholes, not cut Council Tax
• So taking 1M efficiency saving from VIA Is wrong. It should be reinvested in our roads- – which would fix about 20000 holes. I estimate it is about £2.65 a year on a Band B house.. Almost certainly less than people are going to be spending on cut knees and additional wear and tear on their cars.. But in any case I have other suggestions for savings later.
• The Conservative amendment has good ideas on highways maintenance, but I have to ask.. Why Cllr Clarke didn’t you do this last winter? Can I suggest that Via might be encouraged to undertake more paid outside work as they used to? They have bases all over the county that could be leveraged.. This council needs more commercial nous.

EDAM

• The Tories plan for the sale of County Hall also shows no commercial nous.  Once it is gone, it is gone. It’s may result in a short term bung to council finances but will lead to long term loss.. This fire sale sums up tory approach to finance. I accept that the current use of space in CH is appalling. But I have never seen an explanation for the figures for the running costs.. does this include IT ? Does this take account of the costs of providing office space for the staff who are there. What choices are being made in plans to update the building? These have never been discussed widely. Any respectful of the council but it also needs to be flexible efficient and modern. I agree to closing Trent House closed but we need to wait for LGR and also until the home working situation settles down.. The numbers of cars in the CH car park continue to increase. CH has huge potential to be exploited to house our council services and bring in money and facilities for the people of Nottinghamshire as part of the sporting quarter in that area

Finance and Resources

• Please can you explain why we need a 220k increase in corporate comms?
• I am very concerned about the £2M increase for ICT services.. I would like to see more details on this as although I recognise that the County is dealing with a lot of sensitive data but my group are acutely aware that the County IT is very very highly specified compared to other organizations that we work with
• But importantly I note that ICT strategy is out of date..  It is for 2022-2025. It talks of technology debt but I question whether this is current.. We have amazing hybrid working facilities available across the estate  that I visit, and a rapid replacement of lap tops and phone etc,
• But there are other questions that need to be asked: How resilient are the cloud services: what happens when they do go down (as happened last November to azure). How fit for purpose are third party software packages and what is their cost and cost of change overs.
• I ant like to see a technical update to this strategy, with pressure applied to the reduce this budget to offset some other cuts that need reversing.

Summary

• You came in saying you would cut CT but it is going up by 3.99% this year and you seem to have committed to increase it every year- you said you wouldn’t increase it but of course you have found out it is more difficult than that.
• You have managed to achieve any cut because the government and the Mayor have given considerable extra funding to Nottinghamshire, with a multi year settlement providing much-needed stability and and ability to plan finances over a longer-time-period than has been possible in recent years
• But is your planned lower-than-allowed increase in Ct safe for Nottinghamshire in the long term?
• How often in the past have the council budgeted to raise £25m+ in capital receipts in one financial year and how many times were they successful in achieving this?
• When did the council last do a large transfer of £15M from reserves
• Is it realistic to predict borrowing requirements increasing by £240 M over two years – nearly 30% of the entire council budget
• The MTFS proposes savings and efficiencies of £25.4m next year.. When did the council last achieve savings of about a third of its total budget ?

I fear this budget is storing up problems for the future. I fear the “Reform Way” is simply a triumph of hope over reality.  For the sake of the people of Nottinghamshire, I hope I am wrong. But the Labour group believe we have a responsibility to reject this budget, and the amendment.