Nottingham Castle was built nearly 1,000 years ago, designed as an impregnable Norman fort.
Today it is a tourist attraction – but just as inaccessible.
The castle, owned by the council, has been closed since November, when its trust went into liquidation.
It is a symbol of a city and of a council that has struggled financially in the two years since it lost £38m on a failed company – Robin Hood Energy.
But it tells a bigger tale, of a local government system which is creaking – stripped of cash by Westminster and shaped by incentives and pressures that can lead councils to financial disaster.
Just down the road from Nottingham Castle is a centre called Base 51 that works with vulnerable young people.
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Its funding from Nottingham City Council has been completely cut so it’s launched a crowdfunding campaign. But as things stand, it will have to vacate its premises in six months.
Three teenagers were there when Sky News visited.
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“Before I started coming here I was going out and getting into trouble,” Deyarni Beedy-Lamonte said.
“But since I’ve started coming here I’ve been offered counselling. And obviously that’s helped get me onto a better path.”
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2:04
Local councils explained
Quinn Vahey says there’s little else on offer for teenagers in Nottingham. “If I weren’t here, I’d be getting in trouble every day basically. I’d probably get arrested by now.”
Nottingham City Council told Sky News: “Like all councils, the City Council has been receiving less and less in government grants over the past 13 years to pay for local services, which has forced us to cut services that we would prefer not to.”
Not all councils have launched an energy company, though, and seen it go quite spectacularly bust.
But the council is right about government funding – grants from central government have fallen nearly 90% since 2014.
During roughly the same period, councils have cut back on discretionary spending.
Take roads, for instance – fixing things like potholes. Around £1bn was spent across all councils in 2013.
Today, that’s fallen to £690m, even after adjusting for inflation. Or street lighting, which has lost £100m in funding.
One of the most famous councillors in the country (not a crowded field) is Jackie Weaver.
She went viral after a chaotic Zoom meeting of a parish council, in which she was told: “You have no authority here Jackie Weaver. No authority at all.”
But Weaver is chief officer at Cheshire Association of Local Councils and knows the subject inside out.
“As money has got tighter over, I would say, the last 10 years, probably, we’ve seen the district and county councils in Cheshire disappear, the county council disappeared altogether, contract so much that now they only perform their statutory functions,” she told Sky News.
“Now, that means all the kind of community stuff that is visible, that makes us feel good, doesn’t happen anymore. They don’t have any money to do it. They only focus on statutory obligations.”
Statutory obligations are services that councils are legally obliged to provide and the most important, and the most expensive, is social care.
Councils are spending an ever greater share of their budgets on social care, as the population ages and care demands become more complex.
Total council spending has gone from £26bn 10 years ago to £30bn today, again adjusted for inflation.
If you look at social care as a proportion of councils’ total spending, you can see just how much it’s eating up – from 57% in 2012 to 62% last year.
Three councils – Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Halton in Cheshire – spent more than three quarters of their total 2021/22 budgets on providing social care.
So: add a massive cut in central government funding to a huge increase in demand for services councils are legally obliged to provide and spending cuts in other areas seem inevitable.
This isn’t just a tale of austerity, though, but a deliberate redesign, dating back to changes to the system made back in 2010.
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2:29
Who pays the most council tax?
“Councils were told to be innovative, entrepreneurial – to act like any other company, and this involved investments, property, other sorts of investments, maybe outside their own local authority area,” Jonathan Werran, CEO of thinktank Localis, told Sky News.
“But the reason they were doing this was to earn revenue to fund the local public services upon which people depend and rely upon – trying to plug the gap.”
That “entrepreneurial” model may have suited some councils – but it has led others, like Nottingham, into choppy financial waters.
Nottingham issued a Section 114 notice – a formal declaration of financial problems – in 2021.
But it’s far from the only one.
Thurrock, Slough and Kent have all issued Section 114 notices within the last year.
Woking, which has racked up £2bn in debt investing in property, has said it is in danger of doing the same.
“There’s definitely more and more councils that are in challenging financial positions – a number of councils over the last five years or so particularly have borrowed quite heavily to fund investment in property,” Tim Oliver, chairman of the County Councils Network, told Sky News.
The person who changed the system was Lord Pickles, secretary of state for communities and local government in David Cameron’s coalition government, in 2010.
The idea behind the reforms was “essentially, to give [councils] more power and give them more say of how they spent things”, Lord Pickles told Sky News.
“And it’s called localism. And it really was designed to give power right down to the lowest level in local government.”
Sky News asked him about the councils that have issued Section 114 notices and whether it was a good idea to ask councils to be more entrepreneurial with public money.
“I want to say so, I think a lot of it boils down to a lack of due diligence,” he said.
“But the ones that we talk about, I think that there’s been a kind of a real problem when they’re sort of moved into this without properly thinking it through.”
Image: Tom Cheshire speaks with teenagers in Nottingham
Every council Sky News spoke to said they need more money from central government.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities told Sky News: “We are making an additional £5.1bn available for councils in England in the next financial year.
“We are also providing multi-year certainty to local government, outlining spending over the next two years to allow councils to plan ahead with confidence.”
Sky News understands that around £2bn of that new money is intended for social care.
And that may ultimately end up costing even more. Take Base 51 for example. As non-statutory spending, it can be cut.
But if those teenagers get into trouble and enter the social care or criminal justice system, that ends up costing more down the line.
“That’s the challenge we’re trying to work through now,” Mr Oliver told Sky News.
“You need to sort of double run it.
“So you need to have sufficient money to deliver the services to the people that are already in the system. But then equally you need to put funding and investment into prevention and early intervention.
“It is a false economy, not to invest in that early prevention. But that is the challenge around finding the funding to do both.”
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5:44
Labour demand council tax freeze
Local government can be an unglamorous subject but it has a huge impact on people’s lives: the fabric of our society is made up of many threads.
Many of them are small: street lights, bin collections, pot holes, community centres.
Some are huge, like social care.
And pick at those threads, year after year, and it adds up to the sense that the social fabric, the deal between citizens and state, is fraying.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
As we pulled back the hospital curtain, he was hunched over and clearly in pain.
He had climbed off the hospital bed to greet us with a polite smile, then hobbled back to lie down again.
Every breath was uncomfortable, but he wanted to share the horrible reality of knife crime.
Image: The young knife attack victim in Manchester
“I’ve never in my life been stabbed so I don’t know how it’s meant to even feel,” he said.
“The pain came when I realised the blood’s just spitting out of the side of my rib cage and that’s when I started panicking.
“My lungs felt like they were filled with blood… I thought each breath that I take, I’m going to drown in my own blood.
“I just felt as though I was slowly slipping away.”
Paramedics helped save his life and got him to the hospital in Manchester.
Sky News cannot name the young victim or go into the details of the attack because the police are investigating his case.
We were alongside a support worker called Favour, who is part of a growing team called Navigators. They go into hospitals to help young victims of violence.
While checking on how his recovery is going, she gently asked what he wanted to do next.
“You should have the right to feel safe,” she said to him.
“So don’t blame yourself for what happened… we are going to be there to help you.”
Image: Favour talks with the victim
‘Scarring and traumatic’
In a corridor outside the major trauma ward at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, Favour said: “They are often scared, often really tired from being in hospital.
“It does stay with you, not just for a couple of weeks, but it can go on for months, years, because it is something very scarring and traumatic.
“Having someone to talk to, being able to be very vulnerable with… that can lead you to find different spaces that are safe for you, can make a huge difference.”
In the adjacent Children’s Hospital in Manchester, we met the clinical lead at the Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit.
Image: Support worker Favour is part of a team called Navigators
Dr Rachel Jenner is a senior consultant who expanded her emergency department work into the wider mission of violence reduction after treating one particular young stab victim.
“When he arrived at the hospital, he was obviously very distressed and stressed,” she said. “A little bit later on, when things were stable, I asked him if he wanted me to call his mum.
“When I asked that question, he just kind of physically crumpled on the bed and just looked like the vulnerable child that he was, and that was really impactful for me.”
Image: Dr Rachel Jenner
‘Positive results’
The Violence Reduction Unit was established in 2019 with a commitment from the city’s authorities to work together better to prevent violence and deal with it efficiently when it occurs.
Dr Jenner still treats young knife crime victims, but revealed the number of stab-related admissions is falling in her hospital.
“The trend is downwards,” she confirmed. “We’ve definitely seen some positive results.”
The latest statistics in England and Wales show the number of hospital admissions for assault by a sharp object fell by 3% to 3,735 admissions in the year ending September 2024.
“We’re never complacent,” Dr Jenner said. “You reality check yourself all the time, because obviously if… someone gets stabbed, then it’s quite possible that I’ll be treating them.”
She said the Navigators are crucial to working with young patients.
“They have a really different way of engaging with young people, they’re much better at it than many other professionals,” she said.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all model, they actually wrap around that support according to circumstances… that’s a really positive improvement.”
Tacking violence ‘like infectious disease’
Dr Jenner added: “We try and take a public health approach to violence reduction. In the same way that we would address an infectious disease, if we can use those methods and principles to look at violence.
“Not just reacting when it happens, but actually looking at how we can prevent the disease of violence, that in the long term will have a bigger impact.”
The key is teamwork, Dr Jenner said. Collaboration between the police, community leaders, victim support, health workers and people in education has noticeably improved.
The hospital also sends consultants into schools to teach pupils how to stop bleeds as part of an annual nationwide initiative that reaches 50,000 young people.
At a Stop The Bleed session in Bolton, Greater Manchester, we met 11 and 12-year-olds growing up with the threat of knife crime.
One Year 7 boy said: “There was a stabbing quite near where I live so it does happen, but it’s very crucial to learn how to stop this bleed and how to stop deaths.”
Another two friends talked about a boy their age who had been involved in an incident with a knife.
“No one would expect it for someone that young,” one said. “They’re just new to high school, fresh out of primary, and they shouldn’t just be doing that, too young.”
Image: Sanaa Karajada
‘We are dealing with it every day’
Their school has decided to tackle the problem of knife crime head-on rather than pretend it isn’t affecting their pupils.
The pastoral lead at the school, Sanaa Karajada, told Sky News: “We are dealing with it every single day, so we have policies and procedures in place to prevent any escalations in our schools or in the community.
“It is very, very worrying and it’s upsetting that [students] are having to go through this, but you know we’ve got to be realistic… if we are shying away from it, we’re just saying it’s not a problem.
“But it is a problem within the community, it’s a problem in all of the UK.”
The government has pledged to halve knife crime within a decade.
These signs of progress may offer some hope, but there is still so much work to do.
A criminal investigation has been launched into the Glastonbury performances of Kneecap and Bob Vylan.
Police announced the decision on Monday afternoon after reviewing video footage and audio of both sets, which took place on Saturday.
It comes after the BBC said it regretted the decision not to pull the live stream for Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury performance, during which frontman Bobby Vylan shouted anti-IDF (Israel Defence Forces) chants.
Later on Monday, as the story had made headlines throughout the day, drummer Bobbie Vylan released a video statement on Instagram, saying politicians who have spent time criticising the band should be “utterly ashamed” for giving “room” to this over other issues.
He also addressed what was said on stage, saying: “Regardless of how it was said, calling for an end to the slaughter of innocents is never wrong. To civilians of Israel, understand this anger is not directed at you, and don’t let your government persuade you that a call against an army is a call against the people.”
Image: Moglai Bap and Mo Chara of Kneecap perform at Glastonbury. Pic: Reuters
In a statement, Avon and Somerset Police said that after reviewing footage of both performances, further enquiries are required and a criminal investigation is now being undertaken.
“A senior detective has been appointed to lead this investigation,” a spokesperson said. “This has been recorded as a public order incident at this time while our enquiries are at an early stage.”
The force said the investigation will be “evidence-led and will closely consider all appropriate legislation, including relating to hate crimes”.
“We have received a large amount of contact in relation to these events from people across the world and recognise the strength of public feeling,” it added. “There is absolutely no place in society for hate.”
What happened?
Image: Bob Vylan performing on the West Holts Stage, during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. Yui Mok/PA Wire
During Bob Vylan’s set, the duo performed in front of a screen that showed several messages, including one that said Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to “genocide”.
Bobby Vylan also led chants of “death to the IDF”.
The set was live streamed by the BBC as part of its Glastonbury coverage, but has not been made available on demand.
Politicians including the prime minister have criticised the performance. Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis said the chants “crossed a line” and that there was no place at the festival for “antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence”.
A BBC spokesperson said the broadcaster respected freedom of expression “but stands firmly against incitement to violence”.
They added: “The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves…
“The team were dealing with a live situation, but with hindsight we should have pulled the stream during the performance. We regret this did not happen.”
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2:32
What’s the Glastonbury controversy?
Media watchdog Ofcom said it was in talks with the BBC and that the broadcaster “clearly has questions to answer” over the stream.
Irish-language rap trio Kneecap were on stage afterwards. Before their appearance at the festival, there had been calls for Glastonbury to remove them from the bill – as rapper Liam Og O hAnnaidh (who performs as Mo Chara) is facing a terror charge, accused of displaying a flag in support of the proscribed group Hezbollah at a gig in London last November.
Glastonbury organisers kept them on the line-up, but the BBC chose not to stream their set live. An edited version was later made available on demand.
On stage, the band led chants of “f*** Keir Starmer”.
O hAnnaidh’s bandmate Naoise O Caireallain (Moglai Bap) said they would “start a riot outside the courts” for O hAnnaidh’s next appearance, before clarifying: “No riots, just love and support, and support for Palestine.”
Hundreds of people turned out in protest for his first court appearance earlier this month.
After the police investigation was announced, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy criticised the “appalling and unacceptable” scenes at Glastonbury and said the government would not tolerate antisemitism.
She said she had called BBC director-general Tim Davie after the broadcast of Bob Vylan’s set to find out why it had aired, and why the feed had not been cut.
“I expect answers to these questions without delay,” she said.
Ms Nandy said she had spoken to members of the Jewish community, including attendees at Glastonbury, who said they were concerned by imagery and slogans and ended up creating their own “safe space”.
Christopher Landau, the US deputy secretary of state, said the band had been banned from the US ahead of a tour later this year due to their “hateful tirade” at the festival.
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Bob Vylan were set to perform in Chicago, Brooklyn and Philadelphia in the autumn. They are due to perform at Radar Festival in Manchester on Saturday and Boardmasters, a surfing and music festival in Newquay, Cornwall, in August.
Sharing a statement on Instagram after the Glastonbury set, Bobby Vylan said: “Teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place.
“As we grow older and our fire starts to possibly dim under the suffocation of adult life and all its responsibilities, it is incredibly important that we encourage and inspire future generations to pick up the torch that was passed to us.”
The war in Gaza, which has continued for more than 18 months, began after Hamas militants launched attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
More than 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war began, more than 400 of them during the fighting in Gaza.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has devastated the enclave and killed around 56,500 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but says more than half of the dead are women and children.
A 92-year-old man has been found guilty of raping and murdering a woman born 133 years ago – in what’s thought to be the UK’s longest cold case to reach trial.
Ryland Headley was convicted at Bristol Crown Court of killing 75-year-old mother of two, Louisa Dunne, at her home back in June 1967.
Latest DNA technology – as well as matching palm prints taken at the scene more than 57 years ago – led a jury to find Headley guilty on both charges.
Image: Ryland Headley, now aged 92, has been found guilty of rape and murder. Pic Avon and Somerset Police
Image: The front of Louisa Dunne’s home. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Detective Inspector Dave Marchant from Avon and Somerset Police said forces across the country are investigating whether Headley could be linked to other unsolved crimes.
“This investigation was a blend of new and old forensic techniques – DNA being the latest and greatest…but we were able to utilise that original investigative material,” he said.
On the morning of 28 June 1967, neighbours noticed that Louisa Dunne, born in 1892, wasn’t standing on her doorstep as usual.
They found her lying dead inside her home in the Easton area of Bristol – bruised, blood coming from one ear, vomit in her mouth and her underwear around her ankles.
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The police investigation at the time found traces of semen on intimate swabs and on the skirt she was wearing, but it was around 20 years before DNA testing.
Image: Louisa Dunne’s skirt. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Map showing original house-to-house coverage. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
A palm print was also found on one of the rear windows inside the house.
“The original investigation was, by all accounts, massive,” DI Marchant told Sky News.
“Over 19,000 palm print eliminations were taken from men and boys in the Bristol area and beyond. Over 8,000 house-to-house records were completed and several thousand statements were taken,” he added.
But Headley – in his 30s at the time – lived just outside the ring of houses where palm prints were taken.
A post-mortem examination found she had “extensive abrasions” on her face and that the most likely explanation was that a hand had been pressed against her mouth.
Image: The back of Louisa Dunne’s house. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Palmprint images. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Around 20 crates of evidence were stored in Avon and Somerset Police HQ for nearly six decades alongside other cold cases.
The case was reviewed in 2024, with new DNA testing on the sperm found on the skirt Ms Dunne had been wearing.
Investigating officers were told the results showed a DNA match on the national database that was “a billion times” more likely to belong to Headley than anyone else.
“I had to read that email several times to fully digest the content of it and believe what I was reading. Then it was, okay, game on, let’s get this investigation going,” said DI Marchant.
Headley was arrested at his home in Ipswich in November 2024 – he did not give evidence during the trial.
Image: Headley during his arrest. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Louisa Dunne in 1933. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
The jury heard that forensic experts had matched Headley’s palm print, taken on arrest, to that of the one found on Ms Dunne’s window at the time.
The judge allowed the prosecution to raise the fact that Headley had already spent time in jail for committing two other rapes, around a decade after Ms Dunne’s murder.
Both those cases involved attacks against elderly women in similar circumstances.
Prosecutor Anna Vigars KC told the jury these offences demonstrate to all of us that Headley “has a tendency” to act in exactly the same way that we say that he did back in 1967.
“In other words, to break into people’s homes at night and, in some cases, to target an elderly woman living alone, to have sex with her despite her attempts to fend him off, and to threaten violence,” she said.
Image: Ryland Headley is on trial for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Pic: PA
Speaking before the verdict, Louisa Dunne’s granddaughter recalled the moment police told her of progress in the cold case, nearly six decades on: “She said, ‘this is about your grandmother’, and I said, ‘have they caught him?’ It came out, I never thought I’d say anything like that. Have you caught him? and she said, ‘we have a suspect’.”
She described the impact of the attack on her grandmother and that a conviction would bring relief:
“I accepted it. I accepted that some murders just never get solved. And some people just have to live with that emptiness and that sadness.
“I think it’s appalling, absolutely appalling. The poor woman – it must have been absolutely terrifying. And the reality of a rape, I don’t like thinking about, I don’t think anybody does,” she added.
The Crown Prosecution Service told Sky News that it was not aware of a cold case with a longer period between the offence and trial.
DI Marchant told Sky News it demonstrates the value of reviewing such cases: “I think this investigation shows you should never give up.
“You should never look at an investigation and say, ‘oh, it’s too old, it happened X number of years ago’ and have an arbitrary cut off point. At the time we re-instigated it in 2024… there was a chance a suspect could still be alive and as it turned out – he was.”