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Well its been a very busy month, writes Coun Mick Barton, Mansfield Independents leader and Mansfield Council member for Maun Valley.

Even though there’s lots of negativity nationally whenever you turn the news on, there are many brilliant things happening locally.

I made some wooden silhouettes that some of you may have seen in Forest Town at the Asda roundabout, the Clipstone Road Roundabout and the green across from St Alban’s Church .

I had some help putting them up but I think the whole community got really involved this year.

Crowds flocked to Mansfield's Christmas lights switch-on.

Warsop also looked amazing with its Remembrance to the fallen – well done to everyone involved.

I would like to thank everyone who turned up to all of the Remembrance parades across the district, they were all very well attended – the one I’m involved in, at Forest Town, was probably our biggest yet.

A massive thank you to everyone who helped on the Royal British Legion stand in Asda for the two weeks leading up to Remembrance Day , and all of the pubs, shops, and schools who also helped by donating and collecting donations.

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Coun Mick Barton, Mansfield Independents leader and Mansfield Council member for Maun Valley.

This year has been amazing and Clipstone and Forest Town Royal British Legion have collected in more than £19,000, an absolutely super effort by everyone involved.

Now we can move on to the Christmas festivities. Most of our villages have Christmas light displays and switch-ons and I have attended Forest Town’s and Mansfield’s but the whole district looks amazing.

The Big switch on in the Town Centre on Sunday was very special – well done again to everyone involved.

Some of you may also know I got involved helping Wes Dolan, one of our street entertainers.

A meeting was organised with Mansfield business imrpovement district, council officers, police, town centre business owners, myself, Coun Brian Lohan and the mayor, Andy Abrahams.

Wes and Laura Wilcockson, both very good entertainers and musicians, had some good input and we all made suggestions to try to improve this situation moving forward.

We agreed to change the code we already have and tweak it to help things improve.

The council will draft what everyone agreed at the meeting and we can hopefully all have a very pleasant experience when we visit our town centre.

Thanks to everyone involved.

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Hopefully I will get the chance to get another column in before Christmas but if not please have a lovely Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.