Nottingham

Introduction

Nottingham is situated on the River Trent, with the heart of the city being the recently redeveloped Old Market Square. Nottingham is a highly accessible city with the M1 motorway only a few miles from the city centre. It also has good links to East Midlands Airport just 12 miles away. It also lies on the Midland Mainline railway line to London St Pancras.

Large employers in Nottingham include Boots, Experian, the credit reference agency, Powergen and Gala Group, the betting company. The American Credit card company Capital One’s European offices are also located in the city and Nottingham is also the home of HM Revenue and Customs and the Driving Standards Agency.

Recent Visits

Demographics for Nottingham

Mid-2006 Population Estimates

Children and Learners

• three new city academies are proposed under a £75m plan. These are to be located in the north, east and west of Nottingham and will serve a total of 3,700 pupils (eleven to sixteen year-olds) and just over 95,000 students
• Nottingham City has received over £231,000 as the first tranche (2006-07) of the Youth Opportunity Fund and over £200,000 Youth Capital Fund. The funding will help support the development of an integrated youth service that reflects young people’s needs and aspirations
• as part of the New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme, Radford & Hyson Green supports a mini Education Action Zone providing activity for primary pupils in the area, covering 10 schools. This is a three-year, £1.4m initiative. A secondary school and Djanogly City Academy have been invited into the partnership

• Nottingham designated 16 children’s centres over Phases One and Two (2004-08)

• Nottingham City is delivering two Free Entitlement pilots and one Play pathfinder for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The first pilot will offer the new flexible free early education to two year-olds of 12.5 hours per week over 38 weeks of the year. As a second wave pilot authority Nottingham will also begin delivering a similar pilot scheme to three and four year-olds of 15 hours per week by September 2008. As a Play pathfinder the authority receives £2m capital and £550,000 revenue funding to develop 25 to 30 sites

Health and Well Being

• a £10m new state-of-the-art centre for the treatment of blood disease opened in October 2006 at the Nottingham University Hospitals' City Hospital campus. The unit, which was the first in the UK to receive European (JACIE) accreditation as a centre of excellence in bone marrow transplantation, heralds a new era of modern facilities for patients in Nottingham
• the £5.5m InHealth Nottingham PET/CT (positron emission topography/computerised tomography) Centre opened at Nottingham University Hospitals' City Hospital campus in June 2006. This Public/Private Partnership development is the first full clinical centre of its kind outside London, with a cyclotron and research facilities. The new centre will help eliminate the need for other diagnostic tests and even major surgery
• the first phase of the Mary Potter Joint Access Centre Local Improvement Finance Trust project opened in April 2007 and this £14.5m investment is due to be completed by the end of 2008

Crime

• Nottingham is one of the four designated High Crime Areas in the East Midlands and was expected to secure a 26.1 per cent reduction in British Crime Survey comparator crimes by the end of March 2008 compared with the March 2004 baseline. By the year ending March 2007, Nottingham had secured a 17.2 per cent reduction. The key challenges faced by local partners include violent crime and criminal damage

• Nottingham has also been designated as a Local Area Agreement demonstration site for early intervention

Transport

• the new A612 Relief Road in Gedling was formally opened on 8 May 2007
• under the second (2006-11) Local Transport Plan (LTP) settlement for 2008-09 (announced in November 2007), the Greater Nottingham joint plan received £19.2m and the North Nottinghamshire Plan £9.9m, for small (sub-£5m) integrated transport and maintenance schemes
• the Three Cities/Counties Transport Innovation Fund project, modelling and testing alternative road pricing schemes to tackle congestion in the sub-region, reported in April 2008. The authorities announced in May that, although they had decided not to submit a bid to DfT for further funding to implement a road pricing scheme, they would continue to work together to develop proposals to tackle congestion
• Transport Works Act Order powers for Phase Two of the Nottingham Express Transit tram scheme were applied for by Nottinghamshire County Council and Nottingham City Council. Following the public objection period a Public Inquiry was held inlate 2007. The inspector's report is currently being considered by the Secretary of State for Transport
• Nottingham City Council have been consulting the public and stakeholders about the possibility of introducing a Workplace Parking Levy. This would contribute to tackling congestion and provide an additional funding stream for other local transport projects such as the tram extension and improvements to the railway station. The City Council's Workplace Parking Levy Order was subject to public consultation until the end of June 2008, prior to being submitted to the Secretary of State for Transport for her confirmation 

Social Inclusion and Regeneration

• £48m has been awarded from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund until March 2006, with a further £28m available to March 2008. Over 50 projects were targeted for funding, including a scheme to encourage online learning for all and a mobile task force to respond to issues of anti-social or criminal behaviour
• £55m has been allocated from the New Deal for Communities fund to the Radford and Hyson Green Partnership’s 10-year regeneration plan. Now in year eight it has made many improvements to the area and seen increases in the number of local businesses, both developing and expanding. In the 2006 Performance Management Framework it was assessed as ‘excellent’ and considered to be improving
• £6m has been allocated for Greater Nottingham from the Single Regeneration Budget to reduce the gap between Nottingham's deprived areas and the rest of the country, and improve quality of life for local people
• Communities and Local Government confirmed Nottingham as part of the Three Cities new Growth Point (along with Leicester and Derby) in October 2006, establishing a long term partnership for growth. £100,000 was secured for 2007-08 for studies to support a major sustainable urban extension to the city. The Three Cities Growth Point has been awarded an additional £24.2m over 2008-11 to support the growth outlined in their Program of Development

European Funding

• Nottinghamshire Learning and Skills Council was awarded over £1.6m from the Objective 3 European Social Fund (ESF) for 2002, over £10.4m for the period 2003-05 and £23.4m for 2004-08
• the East Midlands Job Centre Plus has been awarded approximately £10.5 m of funding from the Objective 3 ESF for 2003-05, and a further £12.8m for 2004-08 to support projects across the region

• The Coalfield Alliance has been allocated £52.905m, the Greater Nottingham Partnership has been allocated £33.461m and the Regional Development Agency has been allocated £22.625m of European Regional Development Fund and £3.845m, £3m and £3.110m ESF Objective 2 respectively for projects in the Nottingham area