Meeting Details

(a) Questions to Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority

(b) Questions to the Leader, Cabinet Members and Committee Chairmen

This Council notes that Derby City Council, Derbyshire County Council, Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Councils are in negotiations to create a Combined organisation.

That the bid calls for a large number of extra powers to be given to the East Midlands Mayoral Combined Authority from central Government. This Council notes that the bid calls for any new executive mayor or governor to have the power to introduce an extra precept - an additional section on council tax bills. This will see residents across the two counties and two cities paying more in Council Tax every year. This could possibly see Council Tax bills rise by over £100 at a time we are living in a cost-of-living crisis.

This Council believes this is the wrong time to be raising Council Tax again and therefore commits to making it clear during negotiations that Nottinghamshire County Council is against any introduction of a mayoral precept and will write to the partner councils and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities making this clear.

Councillor Francis Purdue-Horan    Councillor David Martin

We know that the climate and ecology crisis is changing our world. It is affecting some people's lives now but affects will worsen in the lifetime of younger people living in Nottinghamshire.

COVID has shown that we can rapidly respond to crises that affect our health now, but we find it much harder to deal with future risks, e.g. climate and ecology issues, pandemic planning, and energy policy.

If is easier to focus on these future risks if we link them to the lives of our young people, by adopting the Future Generations Principle, which seeks to ensure that in meeting our own needs we do not stop future generations meeting their needs.

In the last session of Parliament, Lord Bird introduced a UK-wide Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill based on this principle, which ran out of time, but had cross-party support, including from Nottinghamshire MPs Ruth Edwards, Darren Henry, Nadia Whittome, Brendan Clarke-Smith and Lilian Greenwood.

This Council will:

1. Act in accordance with the Future Generations Principle, ensuring that we meet the needs of current residents without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
2. Require all council reports to explicitly consider impact on future generations.
3. Provide the Nottinghamshire Young People's Board with formal opportunities to scrutinise Council's policies and decisions, in terms of the Future Generations Principle.

Councillor Penny Gowland    Councillor Paul Henshaw