Nottinghamshire County Council Budget Consultation 2024

Overview

What Nottinghamshire County Council does

We aim to create a healthy, prosperous and greener future for everyone who lives and works in Nottinghamshire, as outlined in our 10 year vision, The Nottinghamshire Plan 2021-2031. The building blocks for this vision include healthy early years, education, employment, transport and access to services for people needing more specialist support.

The county council provides a wide range of services, including essential care and support for vulnerable older people, which represents the majority of our budget. We also offer help, protection, and care for children and young people through services such as children’s centres, youth services and children’s social care. We offer support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We assist people with learning disabilities in accessing education and work, support people out of hospital, and maintain thousands of miles of roads and pavements. Our responsibilities also include commissioning major road projects, planning public transport, and leading flood prevention efforts.

We run Trading Standards to protect consumers and support businesses across Nottinghamshire. We fund partners to manage our libraries and cultural services, as well as some of the best country parks and visitor attractions in the county. We officiate thousands of weddings and play a crucial role in registrations. We also support the school admissions process, fund and commission new schools, attract inward investment, and promote access to modern, reliable broadband services. We work with partners to pave the way for investment in businesses, jobs, and housing.

Our efforts to strengthen the building blocks for good health include giving children the best start, supporting individuals in making healthy lifestyle changes, and addressing the harmful impacts of homelessness and domestic violence. Each year, we have a legal duty to balance our budget, and like the people of Nottinghamshire, we face pressures such as inflation and energy costs. We also experience increased demands on our services, including a rise in complex and specialist health care needs and a national shortage of social care staff.

How we are investing in Nottinghamshire

From 2025/26 onwards, the council projects a budget shortfall of £36 million across the duration of our Medium-Term Financial Strategy, up to 2027/28. Despite this, we have a proven track record of balancing our budgets and saving money by transforming the way we deliver key services. We continue to mitigate and reduce budget pressures while introducing life-changing ‘prevention’ services that help reduce demand for expensive care.

We work to keep children safe at home whenever possible and place more children who need specialist care into long-term family-based placements, including foster families and kinship care. These placements improve children’s life chances and are more cost-effective for the council. Investing in our highways also boosts the economy and delivers better value to taxpayers. For example, we build major new roads and junctions to support people and businesses and are changing the way we maintain our 2,500 miles of roads to reduce costs and improve service.

We want you to tell us what matters to you.