A campaign group is staging a pre-work-time rally in Nottingham City Centre on 26th June between 8:30am and 9:30am, which seeks to draw supporters together to issue a call to the future Prime Minster to hear their concerns over cuts on a day when the final Question Time Leaders debate is being held.
Resolve are rallying all Nottingham anti-cuts campaign groups at the Old Market Square’s Brian Clough statue - a regular site of protest - to raise the local funding crisis and services cuts up the agenda as the debate takes place that evening. The campaign is one that started to mount a local response to the City Council’s effective bankruptcy, issuing a Section 114 notice in November, and hopes to raise and include local voices in finding solutions.
Adam Pickering is the facilitator at Resolve. He said: “We’ve seen almost no talk of the council budgets crisis during this election cycle, nobody seems to have a plan. The next Government must start placing citizens and local communities like Nottingham at the heart of finding solutions. Local people are already suffering from 14 years of cuts and the cost of living crisis, we can't take any more punishment. We need a system that provides us all the opportunity to have a say in matters that affect us and our environment, and that protects the most vulnerable in our society.”
A statement said that Nottingham has been ranked as one of the most deprived, least healthy local authority areas in the UK and added that the £1bn in central budget reductions, inflation impacts and increased need for services disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in local communities.
Resolve says that Nottingham citizens are already seeing devastating impacts from the cuts and added that it was vital that people stand together to call for change. They hope that political parties will pay attention to the plight of the city and other communities in the growing crisis that has seen local authorities struggle to balance their books.
In 2018, Northamptonshire County Council became the first authority to issue a section 114 notice in over 20 years. Since then Slough, Croydon, Thurrock, Woking, and Birmingham City have issued notices and thirteen section 114 notices have been issued in total since 2018 The Local Government Association says that councils' spending power has dropped 27% since 2010.
In a report released earlier this year, the Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee said councils were being hit by "systemic underfunding", as well as increased costs and demands for services.
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