Every summer, our City Libraries invite local children to take part in a reading challenge which maintains their interest in reading during the holidays. It?s something very close to my heart ? as a former teacher and headteacher, I know the importance of encouraging reading in children can?t be understated.

This year?s challenge, Ready Set Read, is launched this Saturday and is themed around the power of play, sport, games and physical activity. Children can take part by signing up any time after Saturday 8 July at their local library and collecting free materials as they keep reading. Children can take part in the library ? it?s free and all children need is a library card. If they don?t have one they can sign up at their local library.

Once they have read six books, they will receive a certificate and an invite to a medal ceremony where they will be presented with their very own Summer Reading Challenge medal.?

Through a partnership with the University of Nottingham, City Arts and Lakeside Arts for the HeART project, a range of activities will be held over the summer, including crafts, poetry and a drawing workshop from a Beano illustrator.

Visit https://www.nottinghamcitylibraries.co.uk/summer-reading-challenge/ to find out more.

Works began last month to add a bus lane to the approach to Cinderhill Island on the A610, to help buses get you around faster.

Currently we?re installing new kerb lines as well as working with utility companies to lower or move their pipes and cables underground to make sue the gas, electric, water and telecoms keep working. Next, we?ll install new drainage and then move the street lights to their new locations.

The new lane for buses to leave the A610 via the bus gate and join Nottingham Road is also coming along nicely. Later in the summer, we will resurface the road and footpaths and put in new signs and white lines.

Thank you for your patience during this project, which we expect to have finished by around the end of September.

It is Srebrenica Memorial Week this week, marking the atrocities carried out against Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. In the space of just a few days, over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered and buried in mass graves in Srebrenica ? a dreadful part of wider ethnic cleansing in the region at that time.

The theme for this year?s memorial week is ?Together We Are One? and this resonates in Nottingham, a diverse and tolerant city where most people get on. We must learn from the lessons of Srebrenica that intolerance and bigotry has no place in society. We all need to take action to build positive communities, and tackle hate crime in all its forms, and we will light up the Council House to show this.

You can read more here.

Our Trading Standards team is this week highlighting things to look out for to avoid becoming the victim of a financial scam.

It?s part of the national Citizen?s Advice Scams Awareness campaign which runs this week and is focused on fraud. You can read more here, including advice on the tactics often used by con artists, while officers will be in Mansfield Road, Sherwood, on Thursday from 2pm to 4pm. Please go along if you have any questions.

It is almost three weeks since the tragic deaths of Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber and Grace O?Malley-Kumar. There has been a huge outpouring of grief and unity in the city to stand against such terrible violence.

The City Council has arranged for flowers left at Ilkeston Road and Magdala Road, along with those on the steps of the Council House that are beginning to perish, to be gathered. The intention is to eventually compost all the flowers and use this as part of a longer-lasting memorial.

We have been in dialogue with the families of Ian, Grace and Barnaby and have agreed that cards, messages and any items clearly left for each victim will go to the relevant family, along with scans of general messages. We are also arranging for each family to receive a copy of the book of condolence. Teddy bears will be sent to a children?s charity.