Thank you to everyone who has been continuing to wear their face coverings following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions last month. I encourage everyone in Nottingham to continue to wear a mask on public transport and in busy indoor places, in order to continue protecting ourselves and others. With many people in the city still unvaccinated and with cases still spreading, particularly among younger age groups, it remains important for us to continue to follow the ?Hands/Face/Space? guidance in our daily lives.

Currently local Covid rates are rising faster among teenagers than other age groups. This age group is more likely to mix together and may think they are unlikely to get Covid or suffer seriously if they do but sadly this is not always the case. Plus any rise in local rates of infection is a concern for the whole population. If you know teenagers who are reluctant to get jabbed, please encourage them to do it for others if not themselves. Details of vaccination site opening times for 16 ? 17 year olds are below.

Today I was at an event at St Anns Allotments to sign the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration, which confirms our commitment to develop sustainable food policies, and calls on national governments to put food and farming at the heart of the global response to the climate emergency at COP26.

Glasgow is hosting the pivotal climate change conference in November, which comes after the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its stark report which stated there is unequivocal evidence that humans are to blame for increasing temperatures. It increases the need for urgent action and while there is more to do, I am proud that Nottingham is leading the way at a local level towards carbon neutrality.

We have reduced our CO₂ emissions per capita by 52.3% since 2005 - the highest fall of any UK core city - through a range of policies and schemes, including:

• Significant investment in an increasingly green public transport system, featuring electric trams, 43% of NCT buses running on bio-gas, the Linkbus fleet now 100% electric and 46% of hackney cabs now ULEV
• The council?s own vehicle fleet is 30% electric including the world?s first fully electric bin lorries
• Insulating over 7,000 social and private hard-to-treat homes and installation of solar panels on over 4,000 social housing properties since 2012, with 1,200 more homes in the pipeline for similar retrofitting improvements.

Find out more here and what you can do to help here

St Ann?s Allotments are part of our Carbon Neutral by 2028 network and I?d like to thank them for hosting today?s event, it was great to see and hear from many local organisations supporting our carbon neutral ambition.?

Last week I joined local Clean Champions to help tidy up around the award winning Lenton Estate. One of our key priorities as a council is ensuring neighbourhoods are clean and the work of volunteers is a key part?of achieving that.

Nottingham is lucky to have thousands of people who take pride in their area and give up their time to help make our communities cleaner. There are over 4,500 Clean Champions who help keep our city clean and I?would like to thank every one of them for what they do. If you want to be a Clean Champion you can find out more here.

Nobody likes to see rubbish in their neighbourhoods and it is important to remember that the council provides a number of services to help keep neighbourhoods clean. Issues such as broken bins, missed collections or bulky waste can be reported here.

Nottingham Playhouse and their partners at Hockley Hustle, Nottingham Contemporary, Galleries of Justice and Noise Academy?are running free drama and arts workshops (with free lunch included) across the city as part of the Nottingham Forest Community Trust (NFCT) holiday clubs.

The workshops cover all sorts of activities including drama, beatboxing, DJ skills, dance and street dance, visual arts and crafts, illustration and more.

For more information and booking visit www.bookwhen.com/nfct?or call Arron on 07939 153418. Places are primarily for pupils entitled to Free School Meals but additional free places are available on a first come first served basis.