Nottingham City Council has recently completed a consultation about the future of the city centre. The draft city centre strategy document generated a large amount of interest, receiving over 500 responses, covering over 70 pages. In addition, a number of groups and businesses responded directly with longer feedback, including that of Marketing NG.
The key themes in the strategy – which are important for the whole of the city, not just retail or leisure, but impacting on work, leisure, study – were broadly well received. The most positive comments were regarding events and working in the city. There were also a large number of comments in the following areas:
- Sustainability/green agenda – now is the time to really make Nottingham into a “Green City”
- Transport and access – lots of comments regarding car parking, buses, trams, cycle networks and the need for more pedestrianisation.
The area that needed more work was around ambition – a number of people felt that the ambition should be a lot greater. Nottingham should not just be the best in the East Midlands (which we are today) but comparable to Manchester/Birmingham etc.
The findings have been presented to the first meeting of the Nottingham Growth board and the next stage will be to properly analyse the feedback, and produce a final strategy.