Worst is yet to come in Nottingham as city council eyes up budget cuts

The new leader of Nottingham City Council Neghat Khan pictured at Nottingham Castle
-Credit: (Image: Joseph Raynor/Nottingham Post)


You don't need a crystal ball to see what is coming down the track in Nottingham over the coming months. You just need to look at the numbers.

It's been a very painful year across the city. Multi-million pound gaps in the city council's budget, caused by Conservative austerity and compounded by its own gross financial errors, forced the Labour-led authority to effectively declare bankruptcy in November 2023.

What has followed has been the slashing of much-loved services relied upon by some of the city's most vulnerable. We have also seen delays to crucial payments being made, include one man housing a Ukrainian family not getting the money to support them for months.

All this would be more than enough to stomach, yet all of the above has happened either because of the bankruptcy declaration or to fill the hole the council had in this ongoing financial year. None of the cuts so far have made much of a dent in the mammoth financial gaps that still exist for the years ahead.

In the next financial year alone, beginning in April 2025, an astonishing financial gap of £69 million is currently being predicted. Couple such a startling figure with noises from the new leadership about nothing being "off the table" and it's clear to see we're in for a rough ride.

The theme of new leadership may be particularly influential in the years ahead. Rumblings about the current city council leader being chosen by the Labour Party nationally continue, with local councillors in Nottingham being the ones who would usually have the say.

That method of selection gives the new leader a markedly different mandate from her predecessors, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer having expressed his determination to get local authorities on a firm financial footing. Yet there won't be any cash bailouts to achieve that.

There have instead been some legislative changes that are bound to make a difference, particularly the commitment to ban no-fault evictions which compound Nottingham's homelessness crisis and cost a fortune, as well as cause human misery. Yet to bring those huge financial gaps down, struggling councils are instead having to fundamentally reassess what they offer.

Beyond the things which Nottingham City Council must deliver by law, like social care, everything is up for discussion. The city council usually sets out its initial budget plans for each financial year in November, so it won't be too long before we find out where the axe could fall.

All of this is being done under the watchful eye of three government-appointed commissioners. Speaking previously about the city council's desire to continue all the services it was delivering before, lead commissioner Tony McArdle said: "This council has put itself in a financial position where it can't do that."

Council leader Neghat Khan has also offered a glimpse into how services might change, suggesting the private sector may have to step in to either partly or wholly run services currently offered by the city council. A shake-up of how services are run is therefore bound to form a big part of budget plans for the coming years.

Yet when considering the size of the forecast black holes, huge cuts remain inevitable - a word even the council's chief executive used in her first days in office. We've already been through tough times as a city, but the worst is yet to come.