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Community Plan

Our  Community Plan 2023-2027 (PDF File, 11,236kb) sets out our values, purpose and objectives for four years.

It details what we intend to achieve in that period to improve residents’ quality of life and enable those who live, work and invest in Newark and Sherwood to prosper and fulfil their potential.

We hope that the plan expresses our passion and enthusiasm to make a difference, giving a useful insight into what we’re striving to achieve and how we intend to go about that.

Our purpose

Newark and Sherwood already has much to be proud of. A captivating history, beautiful countryside, characterful market towns, world renowned businesses and an enviable location at the crossroads of the UK’s transportation network.

We want to do all that we can to enable local residents and businesses to flourish and fulfil their potential. We also want to encourage more visitors to enjoy all that our area has to offer.

We will be locally focused and nationally connected – driven by what matters most to the people we serve, but with a perspective and relationships stretching well beyond our boundaries.

Underpinned by your views

Between May and June 2022, we carried out a major consultation exercise, receiving 4,577 responses from local residents in addition to feedback from parish councils, local businesses and other partners. You can view the feedback from this consultation on our Residents Survey page.

Because the Community Plan 2023-2027 is underpinned by this feedback, we can be confident that our focus is on the things that matter most to the people who live and work in Newark and Sherwood.

Our objectives

The Community Plan 2023 to 2027 highlights our focus on the needs of the Newark and Sherwood community.

The eight objectives that underpin our work are:

  • improve Health and Wellbeing
  • increase the Supply, Choice, and Standard of Housing
  • raise peoples’ skills levels and create employment opportunities for them to fulfil their potential
  • reduce Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour
  • protect and enhance the district’s natural environment and green spaces
  • celebrate and invigorate community spirit, pride of place and a sense of belonging
  • to be a top performing, modern and accessible Council

You can find out more about these objectives and our action plan to tackle each of them in the  Community Plan 2023-2027 (PDF File, 11,236kb)

Working together

The Community Plan is not something that the Council can deliver on its own.

Tackling crime, improving health and providing new homes and jobs are just some of the many examples where we rely on the support from partners across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

And whilst our attention is on local priorities, it’s also crucial that we network and influence on a much larger scale in order to generate the investment that we need to provide major items of infrastructure such as the Southern Link Road and A46 northern by-pass.

How do we measure our performance?

The Community Plan lays out how we will deliver for our residents, but how do we, and our residents, know that we are achieving this? We do this by reporting every quarter (every 3 months) on our performance against the Community Plan. We examine data to look at the performance of services, we analyse customer feedback to highlight areas for improvement and show how we are progressing with delivering the activities outlined in the Plan. Understanding our performance is valuable as it allows us to both embed and disseminate good practice and quality service delivery, as well as identifying areas for improvement.

We report on a quarterly basis and the reports from the following periods are available:

LGA Corporate Peer Challenge Report

The LGA operate a peer challenge programme which supports continuous improvement by providing effective insight, guidance and challenge to enable continuous improvement, as well as assurance to local leaders and residents. Newark and Sherwood District took part in a Peer Challenge in October 2024 which involved a team of local authority peers visiting our Council headquarters to look at our approach across five core elements detailed below.

  1. Local priorities and outcomes
  2. Organisational and place leadership
  3. Governance and culture 
  4. Financial planning and management 
  5. Capacity for improvement.

The LGA team hold up a mirror to the organisation, acting as critical friends and let Councils know how we are performing. A Peer Challenge celebrates what we are doing well so we can build on it as well as making recommendation where we could improve.  The team considered a wide range of experience of what ‘good’ looks like in other local authorities as they assessed our performance and provided a presentation on the last day which was followed by the final report which can be found here: NSDC CPC Final Feedback Report (PDF File, 443kb)