Over the past decade, Nottinghamshire has become a region characterised by significant climatic volatility, defined by major flooding and drought incidents. Notable instances of extreme weather include floods in November 2019, when a month’s rain fell in 24 hours, leading to the declaration of a major incident; a severe drought and record-breaking heatwave in August 2022; flooding due to Storm Babet in October 2023; and flooding due to Storm Henkin January 2024.
Recognising the damage climate change was causing across the county, in May 2021, under the then Conservative administration, Nottinghamshire County Council declared a climate change emergency and committed to all council activity being carbon neutral by 2030.
The council was making good progress. In The Nottinghamshire Plan 2021-2031, the council said: “Since 2014-15 we have already reduced carbon emissions from energy use across our highways and properties by 69%.”
In 2024 the council published their Net Zero Framework detailing how they would reduce carbon emissions, adapt to climate change and realise their vision for “a healthy, prosperous, green and resilient Nottinghamshire for all”.
Reform UK’s climate change denial in Nottinghamshire
Control of Nottinghamshire County Council has flipped between Labour and Conservative over recent years, until May 2025 when, in a political earthquake, Reform UK took control from the Conservatives, with Reform UK having 41 of the 66 seats, the Conservatives 18, Labour four and independents three.
The Reform UK councillor now responsible for environmental policies at Nottinghamshire County Council, Bert Bingham, says man-made climate change is a “hoax”. Elected as a councillor for Worksop West and appointed as Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment, he said he will be doing everything in his power to “end the net zero crime”.
“I’ve been involved in award-winning sustainability projects for 25 years, and I’ve never seen such nonsense as the anthropogenic global warming hoax,” he said.
“The statistics are manipulated. I’ve followed it over decades, there’s lots of science out there, but at the moment it seems to be as in a lot of matters with Covid, if you follow the money, you find the science or the pseudoscience.”
Bingham said Reform UK was opposed to net-zero targets, “but that does not mean we don’t support environmental protection, sustainability, resource efficiency, industrial symbiosis – many areas I’ve worked in.”
He added that declaring a climate emergency was “absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical”.
“They’ll have us back living in mud huts – if even living at all – by the time they’re done,” he said.
Scientists around the world agree that human activities are causing temperatures to rise, and the year 2024 was the world’s hottest on record so far and the first calendar year to surpass 1.5°C (34.7°F) of warming.
Strategic retrenchment and ideological conflict
Unlike some councils under Reform UK, such as Staffordshire County Council, that have rescinded their climate change emergency declarations and abandoned net zero targets, Nottinghamshire has been more subtle.
Within the county council structure, cabinet members wield significant executive power, enabling them to make key decisions unilaterally within their respective service areas. By appointing Cllr Bingham as Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment, a man who during the election campaign explicitly asserted that man-made climate change is a “hoax”, the council placed the new leadership in direct philosophical opposition to the council’s own prior policy position on climate change.
To date Nottinghamshire has not rescinded the climate change emergency declaration. To do so requires significant administrative effort, potential legal challenges and the risk of losing governmental and regional grants tied to climate mandates. So why bother when you can starve the net zero policies of political momentum and the dedicated financial resources required for their implementation?
Reinterpreting the Net Zero Framework in Nottinghamshire
The change in priorities can be seen in the way the previous council’s Net Zero Framework is being strategically reinterpreted under Reform UK. Instead of focusing on mandated carbon reduction targets, the administration emphasises activities that align with fiscal responsibility or result in efficiency savings.
For example, the council notes that future plans, such as relocating from County Hall, will result in “massive savings in our energy use”, thereby achieving carbon reduction as a secondary benefit of financial prudence. But at the same time they are spending £500,000 to keep two County Council HQ buildings running!
A decision to reallocate £3.3mn to road maintenance and renewals, traditional non-green infrastructure, was executed under the Reform UK administration, money that could have been directed to Net Zero Framework policies instead.
The Nottinghamshire Plan 2021-2031 and the associated Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) include plans to deliver expanded walking and cycling networks as a matter of priority. However, the Reform administration has confirmed that these infrastructure programmes are “subject to Transport & Environment Cabinet Member consideration and determination”.
Given Cllr Bingham is Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment, with his uncompromising anti-net zero stance, the decision to place these green infrastructure projects under his indefinite “determination” could be seen as a mechanism of soft cancellation.
Soft cancellation led from the top
While the Reform UK administration in Nottinghamshire has not (yet) officially reversed much of the previous administration’s net zero policy, it is achieving the same result by diverting political momentum and capital funding away from green projects, and towards traditional infrastructure.
When the cabinet member with relevant responsibility says, “I’ve never seen such nonsense as the anthropogenic global warming hoax. The statistics are manipulated… you follow the money, you uncover the science or the pseudoscience” you can see how the soft cancellation of net zero policy is being driven.
As Labour county councillor Helen Faccio said at the time: “I don’t think it’s really appropriate that you think you know better than a whole body of evidence and scientists who present all this information all the time and have told us this is happening – we can see it is happening.”
The science is clear – anthropogenic climate change is real, it’s accelerating, and we can see for ourselves that it is already impacting the people of Nottinghamshire.
Pretending climate change is a hoax is dangerous and dishonest and makes dealing with the consequences much, much more difficult and costly. The next time you have the privilege of using your democratic vote, use it in a way that would make your children and grandchildren proud. Or would you rather they ask why you stood by and did nothing in the face of the global catastrophe of climate change?
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