Mayor reflects on 2023

He said:

It has been an enormous privilege to take the work we started in 2019 forward for another four years from 2023. This continuity of leadership has meant we have been able to progress some of the most ambitious projects seen in Mansfield for decades.

The year began with the launch of a major international competition to find an outstanding design for a flagship project to regenerate an historic area of the town centre which has been largely derelict for more than 10 years.

The fabulous winning design for the £17m White Hart Street housing development was announced in July and shows just what can be achieved in this district when we set the bar high.

Similarly, the council, through the Mansfield Place Board, has been pleased to support plans for an important new educational centre, the Future Tech Skills and Knowledge Exchange, which was given planning permission in August.

This exciting and much needed educational facility, which should be up and running by January 2025, should go a long way towards bridging Mansfield’s long-standing skills gap and help to give people here better access to good well paid jobs in the future.

I am also proud to see progress in Mansfield in dealing with one of the most challenging issues facing town centres up and down the land: what to do about the national decline in high street retailing and consequential rise in empty shops.

Our successful £20m bid for government Levelling Up cash means the old Beales store is set to go from being a commercially unviable decaying old department store, with no future and no obvious use, to potentially becoming a busy modern new hub for various public sector organisations.

I look forward to seeing the flagship Mansfield Connect regeneration project moving further forward in the coming year.

This funding has been boosted with Mansfield selected by the government as one of 55 towns to be given £20m endowment-style funds each over ten years to invest in local people’s priorities.

The district will also be blazing a trail nationally in terms of high quality urban design after implementing the Town Centre Design Code in October.

Building high-quality energy efficient council housing has been another priority for us and despite challenging financial circumstances in the construction sector, we have been able to see work start on new homes in the Oak Tree area.

Work has also begun to transform the heart of the Bellamy estate with 22 new energy-efficient homes set to be built around a recreational space where a new children’s play area and learn to cycle track were opened this year. Next year will mark the start of work on 77 more council homes at Centenary Road.

Construction also began on another major project: a new £9.2m health hub with a swimming pool in Warsop, something that is sure to improve the quality of life for people there immeasurably.

Elsewhere in the district, the ever popular Water Meadows saw a £1m investment in new facilities and the Rebecca Adlington Swimming Centre became more energy efficient with the installation of a ground source heat pump as part of carbon reduction measures being introduced at leisure centres across the district.

Also on the environment front, our parks were again awarded a raft of Green Flags; the Berry Hill Park saw its planning application approved do a revamp to become a significant destination attraction for the district; and a new memorial garden opened behind the Old Town Hall, helping make the town centre greener and more inviting.

Community safety is another area of achievement in 2023 with hugely successful campaigns to reduce crime in some of our priority neighbourhoods.

These included an effective targeted initiative to reduce nuisance motorbike use in hotspots areas of the district such as Pleasley and Bull Farm; meanwhile in Oak Tree, bike thefts, arson attacks and fly tipping have all seen decreases as a result of various crime cutting campaigns and new CCTV camera and Safe Points have been installed in Warsop.

The council has also become a beacon of good practice in its response to people experiencing domestic abuse. In April, the authority achieved the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) Accreditation (Foundational), a UK benchmark in supporting survivors, after training its entire workforce to be more aware of the signs of abuse and how to support people.

Meanwhile our culture and events programme went from strength to strength this year with a significant exhibition marking the 70th Windrush anniversary and the district’s first ever Caribbean-themed carnival that brought such warmth and fun to the town centre in June.

Gaining National Portfolio Organisation status with Arts Council England has also brought wonderful new cultural experiences to Mansfield Museum including the recent opening of a fantastic exhibition exploring themes around disability by internationally acclaimed artist Jason Wilsher-Mills.

But while all these good news stories have made 2023 a year of achievement and progression, 2024 may well be more challenging for the council with increasing fiscal pressures affecting local authorities of all political hues across the country.

We want to continue to regenerate our local economy and improve the quality of life for residents; we have to improve our existing but ailing housing stock with a £17.1m repair and improvement programme next year; we want to make Mansfield cleaner and greener and continue to support our communities, including our most vulnerable citizens.

We will continue to squeeze efficiencies into every department of the council while bidding for our share of whatever funding streams are out there.

When councils are continually being asked to do more but with less funding, eventually that will have tangible effects in terms of what we can deliver.

Despite these challenges, we remain confident that we will continue to bring high-quality services across this district and emerge from this cost of living crisis fitter and stronger to face the future.