OPINON: Nottinghamshire Council leader Mick Barton outlines Reform-led authority's plans for 2026

Budget

We have some good news coming shortly from the budget setting over the next week.

We have been working hard to ensure we get the best results for residents, and I am sure you will be pleased with the result.

Council Plan 2025-29

We have a new Council Plan being put into place.

The plan has been carefully thought out over the last seven months of our administration.

Members and officers have been working hard to ensure all of Reform’s ideas for community and families have been laid out in one document, which is easily understood and covers all we want to achieve.

Highways

There is still a lot of work to do regarding the condition of the roads.

We do have a plan, which includes new ways of working.

A right first-time approach has now been introduced and implemented.

In a few weeks we are going to view some new equipment that promises to be more cost effective and quicker with repairs.

We do have further finance in the highways budget, more than ever before to ensure that you see a huge difference in the highway’s maintenance.

As you can appreciate, this will not happen overnight, we are putting right years of neglect but be totally assured roads are at the very top of our list.

We are now in the winter months, the weak spots in the road system are more evident.

We are doing our best before to do quick fixes during the winter months, and permanent where we can.

As soon as the weather changes in spring we will continue our resurfacing works.

We have introduced a system that will cost between £6 and £8 per square metre, compared to the previous administrations system, which cost between £60 to £80 per square metre.

This means we will be able to surface many miles of road for less money.

I want you all to be assured that the highways are at the forefront of our priorities, but please bear with us you will see the difference under our leadership.

Children and Families

Our aim is to encourage more people to become foster/kinship carers, along with promoting adopters.

This will help to ensure that children in care have the best chance to be taken care of by a loving family.

We will do this by offering support avenues every way we can, we will also be promoting assistance for anyone interesting in helping children into a home, in various high profile sporting grounds within the county, along with the newly situation advertising banners around the area.

Armed Forces Representative

The leading group and council are committed to our Armed Forces and veterans community.

The year ahead will see council breakfast clubs welcoming those who have served/families and providing a informal focus and support group.

The flagship event of Boots and Berets acknowledging the support to the AF community by organisation will be held again following its second successful year last year.

The council will also be hosting a recruitment day as part of its Gold Defence Employers award recognition supporting local regiments, squadrons.

One of the most exciting areas will be our engagement with Op VALOUR. A one stop support shop to veterans and our work with external organisations such as fellow gold award holders Nottingham Forest FC.

Adult Social Care

Adult social care remains the councils biggest budgetary spend. As the population ages and medicine extends survival the demands are higher than ever.

The key priority of ASC is to ensure people have a place to call home and their own front door for as long as possible.

Key schemes like growth in Shared lives, Extra care, are all vital to this. Shared Lives is best thought of as adult fostering and involves a person welcoming into their home someone with some social care needs.

Extra care is all about providing people with additional help to maintain independence and reduce the need for residential care particularly at an early age.

All of these will continue and indeed we hope will expand as they are the best method of promoting independence and wellbeing.

We will continue to acknowledge all the hard work by providers in events such as ‘Proud to Care’.

Joined-up thinking and working with those at the sharp end of ASC continues to be key and events such as the ‘Big Conversation’ really help to formulate our strategy.

Maintaining standards in residential care and nursing care are vital elements going forward and both the cabinet member and deputy will continue to visit a variety of services with the team of highly dedicated officers.

Efficiencies and finance

An efficiencies program was completed at the end of November last year, where we identified £45m of savings

These savings have been carefully programmed over the next three years to deliver savings to the budgets.

The efficiency program will not end here; it will be carefully monitored on a regular basis by cabinet and further meetings to oversee its progress are in place.

Thriving Communities

We are committed to health and wellbeing by being at the forefront of guidance and support before situations worsen.

Whether this is help with stopping smoking, quitting alcohol, weight loss, increasing exercise or socialising to boost your mental health.

We can also help with housing, employment and education needs.

These early interventions can have a positive effect on health and wellbeing and have a real impact on resident’s lives.

Getting into Communities

Currently I hold weekly informal cabinet meetings where all aspects of my cabinet’s portfolios are discussed.

However, from now on we will be coming out to the community to hold our meetings bi-weekly.

The reasoning for this is to hear directly from you what you think we need to know about your business or the community you are operating in.

No business is too big or too small for us to visit, we are interested in all aspects and venues of the business community.

This also includes, schools, charities, community hubs, churches any venue where you think our assistance will be valued.