Ted Cantle was Chief Executive of  the City of Nottingham between 1990 and 2001. After eleven years as a successful Chief Executive he was appointed to run the ‘failing councils’ unit on behalf of the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government. His team intervened in over 30 English and Welsh councils to ensure an improved performance. At the same time, Ted was appointed by the Home Secretary to lead the Review of the race riots that took place in English Norther Towns in the summer of 2001. The resulting ‘Cantle Report’ established the concept of Community Cohesion to bring communities together across the divides.

As Chief Executive of Nottingham he oversaw:

  • a transformational management programme known as ‘Nottingham into the Nineties’ which focused on performance and customer service
  • the development of the ‘Green Charter’ into a national exemplar programme, including leading the Climate Change Declaration for local government as a whole
  • the shift from second tier district status to a unitary authority with over 15,000 employees, the City Council again became responsible for education and social services, as well as other strategic roles.
  • a diversity and equality programme for staff and for service users
  • major partnerships with private sector investors and the universities to attract new businesses to the City. This included the successful Nottingham Development Enterprise, and a new tourism strategy around the iconic Robin Hood theme of ‘our style is legendary’

Ted also oversaw a number of particular developments, including:

  • the Nottingham Line One Tram Network
  • The new Nottingham National Ice Centre – a £30m double rink scheme in the centre of the City
  • Nottingham City Challenge – central government funding of £25m

After 11 years as Chief Executive Ted left the City Council to take up a number of other job offers including a number of national roles:

He was appointed:

  • To run the ‘failing councils’ unit on behalf of the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government. His team intervened in over 30 English and Welsh councils to ensure an improved performance. 
  • To Chair the Queens Medical Centre Trust in Nottingham 
  • As a Board member of the Environment Agency – and later became its Deputy Chairman
  • To Chair the Local Government Construction Task Force
  • To Review the causes of the riots in English Northern Towns – This was an appointment by the Home Secretary and the resultant ‘Cantle Report’ on Community Cohesion’ would come to define his next 20 years
  • As a Professor, to develop studies of cohesion

 

Ten years after leaving the City Council, they asked Ted to lead a scheme to transform the Nottingham Castle. This included creating the concept, raising the funding and developing  the themes into an attraction for national and international visitors.  But, the visitor economy had been neglected for the previous decade and the City Council’s support was, to say the least, half hearted, making the whole project very difficult. In fact, even after the Castle project began, the city council failed to have either an officer of elected member with responsibility for developing tourism. But worse was to come as NCC continued to undermine the Trust they had set up.

 

The Development of the Scheme to transform Nottingham Castle and create a visitor economy in the City

It had taken many years to convince the City Council that the scheme was necessary and desirable. More than twenty years ago, a group of public and private businesses and agencies had tried to convince NCC to develop a scheme and actually raised £40,000 from local businesses for the purpose. This money had to be returned, however, because of lack of action by NCC.

But in 2011 a new working party was set up, inspired by the then Sheriff of Nottingham and again led by people from outside the City Council. This group, which would eventually morph into Nottingham Castle Trust, were more determined – and successful. This was despite strong opposition from some City Councillors and some officers who did not share the ambition and did want to give up the Castle to an independent Trust (and arguably, eventually succeeded). NCC went along with the scheme to start with at least, probably because they could see a way of dealing with the backlog of repairs to the Castle (£12 million of repair cost was included in the bid for funding).

To raise the £30 million needed, the Castle scheme had to be presented by the Trust on the basis of a strong vision that had a ‘wow’ factor. This was especially the case as the Castle was bidding for funding against other national schemes like Canterbury Cathedral and Alexandra Palace. The Trust devised the scheme on this basis and with the aim of attracting national and international visitors.

The Heritage Lottery Fund recognised the scale of the ambition and were persuaded to provide nearly £14 million of the total in grant funding to the Castle. They agreed that the scheme had really good and exciting projects, as did the other funders. So, the scheme was never proposed as a purely local facility, it was clearly intended to appeal to a wide range of visitors from around the country and from other countries, initially attracted by the well known legendary story of Robin Hood and the City’s history of Rebellion.

The bid, based on the vision prepared by the Trust and after a lot of local consultation, was formally submitted by NCC. The scheme sought to answer two questions posed by the Nottingham public – ‘Where’s the Castle?’ And ‘Where’s Robin Hood?’.

The Trust built these imaginative design themes into the bid for funding:

First, creating a more castle like experience through developing the view across Collin Street to Castle Road and the arrival at the new public square at the bottom of Castle Road where the Castle rock and walls are at their grandest – from here it actually does look something like a real castle!

Second, the use of the atmospheric tunnel entrance into the Robin Hood underground gallery (previously used by the City Council as a staff car park) also created a new ‘mediaeval’ experience. This gallery was the response to the ‘Where’s Robin Hood?’ question asked by Nottingham residents.

Third, an engaging and interactive ‘Rebellion’ story that set out the rebellious history of Nottingham, commencing with the iconic legend of Robin Hood, linked to the other nationally important episodes – the Civil War, the Luddites and the Reform Act riots – and to draw out the contemporary relevance of ideas of freedom and democracy.

Fourth, the use of the extensive caves and Brewhouse Yard folk gallery to tell the story of the Castle’s 1,000 years of history, including one of the Country’s most important historic events – Edward lll entering the Castle through its cave system (Mortimer’s Hole) to take his rightful crown.

Fifth, new art galleries to showcase Nottingham’s creative pre-eminence, in both Lace and in medieval alabaster (the latter story was never previously told, yet Nottingham was the centre of the international art world between 1300 and 1500)

Sixth, a new learning and educational experience, especially in support fo the ‘freedom, democracy and citizenship’ theme to engage young people in particular and which was particularly attractive to some funders

Seventh, new and exciting facilities to cater for the increased number of visitors – a special coach drop-off zone, a new visitor centre, a land train to take visitors around the entire site, an enlarged cafe and restaurant, a play area and new events spaces

Eighth, – and perhaps most important of all – an extended visitor experience, lasting at least half a day, with a circular tour through the Ducal Palace at the top of the site, going down to Brewhouse Yard folk museum through a new great cave experience, and returning via a story telling land train journey.

Ninth, The bid also included proposals to repair the fabric of the Castle, following years of neglect by NCC. At around £12m, this constituted one-third of the total cost – money which could have been spent on an enlarged visitor experience had NCC looked after the Castle properly.

The components of the scheme were set out in the concession agreement signed by the Trust and NCC. Providing all of these facilities was a condition of the grant aid, though the City Council reneged on many of these conditions – and most are still not complete today

NCC was then responsible for the building works and for the delivery of the scheme as agreed. However, the scheme was not as agreed with the Trust and funders and it was delivered late and was unfinished when initially opened in June 2021 – which made it more difficult for the Trust to attract visitors.

Although the quality of the building works was generally good, the NCC some elements were unfinished or not as agreed. In, particular, the Robin Hood and Rebellion galleries were not immersive and lacked contemporary relevance (this became a major dispute between the Trust and NCC). All galleries failed to sufficiently engage visitors. The Cave tour, Folk museum and land train route were not even completed and the whole visitor experience was much less than that envisaged.

Unfortunately, NCC did not complete the scheme before the date that the Trust were required to open, and the scheme remains unfinished today. This means that the underground tour through the caves and the Brewhouse Yard Area are still not used as intended and the very expensive electric land train has hardly ever been switched on.

And NCC also failed to deliver the following agreed improvements to the visitor environment around the Castle and in the City Centre:

  • The pedestrianisation of Castle Road and improvements to the public realm
  • The demolition of the college buildings on Castle Road and their replacement with
    lower rise buildings that complemented the heritage of the Castle
  • A new public square at the bottom of Castle road, opposite the Olde Trip to
    Jerusalem, to create a sense of arrival and to steer visitors up Castle Road so
    that visitors actually saw the ‘castle’, or at least understood its commanding
    presence.
  • Support for promotion, including signage, marketing and logistics, let alone any attempt to provide the necessary infrastructure to create a visitor economy with the thousands of jobs that would have followed.
  • And most perversely, NCC refused to support the coach drop-off location on Castle Road where visitors could access the land train and proposed putting it in Friar Lane which had already been made pedestrian friendly. Only the opposition of local businesses and residents convinced the Council to abandon their attempt to undermine the Trust and commit to the coach drop-off as agreed. But it has never been used because NCC failed to finish the Brewhouse Yard part of the scheme!

Meanwhile, the collapse of the Broadmarsh redevelopment scheme made the City more unattractive to visitors.

Had the full scheme been implemented as all partners had agreed, together with the wider improvements to the City, Nottingham would have begun to attract many visitors from other parts of the Country and a good number of international tourists who visit Britain. The aim was to put Nottingham on the tourist circuit who generally only visit London and a few other areas, for example Stratford Upon Avon and York, creating much needed new investment and jobs for local people.

This may have appeared as ambitious, but all partners – and more importantly, funders and NCC – agreed that the projects were achievable. And to make the scheme sustainable, it was necessary to attract 300,000 visitors per year, a relatively modest target for a national attraction. Again, all of the Trust’s partners agreed that this was both desirable and feasible. In fact, the City Council commissioned consultants who came up with the 300,000 target in the first instance! The city council were also represented on the Trust Board and submitted all business plans to them for consideration – no adverse comments were ever received.

Of course, no one had then predicted that there would be a global pandemic, nor that it would still be very evident at the time of opening. Although there were also a number of personal and political agendas with which the Trust had to contend, the simple fact is that the pandemic was responsible for the closure of the Castle. The Castle, along with one-in-five similar visitor attractions nationally, who had experienced a 76% drop in visitor numbers,  had no choice but to close.

Rather than the support the Castle Trust through the pandemic, the City Council chose to see the Castle close and eventually to re-open under its own management. This was a surprise, given the fact they that were facing bankruptcy and that £12million of the scheme cost had actually been used to fund their backlog of repairs. And that the Castle had made an annual loss of £350,000 prior to the scheme. It was more surprising that this entailed writing-off millions of pounds of loans that could have been repaid by the Trust or another independent operator.

It is to be hoped that it is better managed in the future, however, the Castle re-opened in summer 2023 and it is already clear that, while the Castle has so much more to offer as a result of the work by the Trust, the City Council still has no intention to create a scheme worthy of Nottingham’s history and reputation around the world.

In 2024 the City Council reviewed the options for the management of the Castle. The report they considered was, however, very tendentious and enabled them to come to the conclusion they wanted – that the Castle should continue to be run by them. they did not seriously investigate the advantages of creating a new entity that could draw upon external funding and be prepared to attract national and international visitors to the City. A local museum and art gallery was the extent of their ambition, even though this would again probably result in another annual loss of more than £300,000 and the managed decline of the building and exhibits – at a time when the Council also revealed it was facing £67 million budget deficit in 2025/26.

More surprisingly, the former Leader of the Council, Cllr David Mellen,  claimed that another Trust option was not desirable because the previous Trust was ‘hostile’ to the City Council. This was a complete reversal of the reality that the Trust had faced over many years. This began when the Trust was invited to step aside by a senior City Council officer immediately after they raised the £35 million funding! When the Trust declined to do so, they then faced a continuing lack of co-operation from the City Council resulting in a deputation from the Trust to see the then Leader – yes, the very same Cllr Mellen – in 2019 to complain about the lack of commitment.

The Trust was continually undermined and City Council staff even attempted to create problems for the Trust Board through collusion with the Trust’s staff. This no doubt contributed to the later problems encountered by the Trust.

Over the past 25 years, the City Council has failed to take advantage of the various offers that it had received to use its history and legacy to build its national and international profile to attract investment and visitors.

More than that, it has actively undermined those efforts and deprived the City of the jobs and prosperity that investment would have entailed.

For the future however, the Castle could still become a visitor attraction of national and international importance. The transformation scheme simply has to be completed and the various galleries used for their intended purpose. While it is true that the Castle lacks much of the the original mediaeval structure, the events that took place  across the site are of national and international importance. Even without the iconic story or Robin Hood and the history of democratic struggle that took place in Nottingham, the world class Nottingham alabasters, the unique history of Nottingham lace and the restoration of King Richard III to the throne through a violent coup in the Castle’s cave system, is more than sufficient to gain recognition.

Sadly, this will not happen under the management of Nottingham City Council. This was recognised by the Trust Board members  and is why they agreed to become involved in the first instance.

 

Footnotes:

The Trust Board always refused to make a public comment on the reasons it dismissed its CEO other than it had ‘lost trust in confidence’ in her. Despite many unfounded allegations the Trust wished to act professionally by allowing the legal process to run its course and for any allegations to be properly considered. Many commentators were of course prepared to jump in and a lot of column inches were filled with erroneous speculation. The Employment Tribunal judge dismissed the interim case two months after the dismissal and the full case was finally dismissed in 2024, without any real evidence having been submitted in support of allegations.

The Castle also faced an accusation of failing to deal properly with a racial incident in 2021. This ‘incident’ took place in the play area between a 10 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. It was not witnessed by any adult and not seen by the Castle staff. The police did not wish to pursue it. The Trust Board were not involved in the incident, nor in the way that it was responded to by staff. The Trust Board commissioned an independent review of the incident, again refusing to comment on the speculation and making sure that the staff had a proper process. In the event, staff were not found to be at fault. (It was found that proper staff  training had not been carried out, despite assurances given to the Board by previous managers).

Throughout both of the above processes, it was notable that some City Council representatives tried to undermine the proper processes and added to the public speculation.