Protest planned ahead of final Leaders’ Debate in Nottingham

Nottingham residents are coming together this morning (June 26) to ensure concerns about cuts in Nottingham are heard by the future Prime Minister.

Candidates arrive in Nottingham today to make their case to the country for the final Question Time Leaders’ debate, to be held at Nottingham Trent University’s city campus this evening.

Pressure group Resolve is rallying all Nottingham anti-cuts campaign groups at the Old Market Square’s Brian Clough statue – a regular site of protest – to raise the local funding crisis and services cuts up the agenda as debate takes place this evening. The campaign that started to mount a local response to the City Council’s effective bankruptcy, issuing a Section 114 notice in November, says it hopes to “raise and include local voices in finding solutions”.

“We’ve seen almost no talk of the council budgets crisis during this election cycle, nobody seems to have a plan,” said Adam Pickering, facilitator at Resolve.

He added: “The next Government must start placing citizens and local communities like Nottingham at the heart of finding solutions. Local people are already suffering from 14 years of cuts and the cost of living crisis, we can’t take any more punishment. We need a system that provides us all the opportunity to have a say in matters that affect us and our environment, and that protects the most vulnerable in our society.”

Pickering says that Nottingham is ranked as one of the most deprived, least healthy local authority areas in the UK after successive cuts in funding from Whitehall.

Resolve says that Nottingham citizens are already seeing “devastating impacts” from the cuts and it is vital that we stand together to call for change. They hope that political parties will pay attention to the plight of the city and other communities in the growing crisis that has seen local authorities struggle to balance their books.

Hosted by Mishal Husain, the special programme will air tonight at 8.15pm in front of a live TV audience who will pose questions to the Leaders of Conservative and Labour parties.

BBC News programmes throughout the day including News at One, Newsnight and News at Six will also be broadcast from Nottingham Trent University.

Up to 150 journalists from the BBC and other national and regional media outlets will be in attendance.