Nottingham City Council is set to adopt an Economic Recovery and Renewal Plan for the city which aims to improve Nottingham’s prosperity and local people’s prospects.
As one of the partners of the Nottingham Growth Board, the City Council has been working with key local businesses, educational institutions, public sector organisations and One Nottingham to develop a bold vision for the city’s future economy as an inclusive, green, creative and digitally enabled city.
The Plan addresses the major economic challenges Covid has created or accelerated, including rising unemployment, the decline of high street retail and the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on young people, BAME communities, women, older people & people with disabilities. It focuses on the delivery of six key ambitions:
• City of Creativity & Culture – building on the Creative Quarter and Nottingham’s Unesco City of Literature status to become an internationally renowned centre of culture and creativity with a reinvigoration of Nottingham’s story and brand identity brought to life by events, festivals and cultural ideas.
• Reshaping the City – physically regenerating the city to create a more sustainable and liveable place adapted for a post-Covid and more digitally enabled world using the opportunity to redevelop the Broadmarsh centre as a catalyst for wider change
• Carbon Neutral City – transforming green investment at scale to build on Nottingham’s track record of delivery to become the UK’s first carbon neutral city by 2028.
• Digital Enterprise – building on the city’s fintech strengths to enhance Nottingham as a significant national centre for digital technologies and enterprise, underpinned by a programme of upskilling across communities.
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation – supporting businesses (existing, new and early stage) to survive and thrive, targeting growth in key sectors and developing the entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem.
• Skills & Employment – preventing long-term mass unemployment by supporting a culture of enterprise and offering extensive and inclusive reskilling/upskilling programmes for citizens to take advantage of new opportunities.
The Plan is being considered for adoption by the council’s Executive Board today (January 18th) and sets out a clear strategic framework that will underpin the council’s efforts to secure economic growth funding.
A public consultation exercise was undertaken earlier this year, with the key finding that local people wanted to see greater emphasis on economic inclusion, so that the city genuinely offers opportunities for everyone. The Plan has consequently been refined so that the drive for inclusion is a theme that runs through the whole Plan.
Nottingham City Council’s Portfolio Holder for Skills, Growth and Economic Development, Cllr Rebecca Langton, said: “All the Nottingham Growth Board partners have agreed on where Nottingham’s key strengths lie, and the issues we need to address, so that we focus our efforts on how best our city can grow and prosper post-Covid.
“This Plan gives us a really clear direction for the city’s future, as well as a framework for securing the support and investment needed for the city to fulfil its economic potential through sustainable growth.”
