The new Sheriff of Nottingham has said some areas of the city are a "dump" but that the council does not have a "bottomless pit of money" to improve them. Councillor Shuguftah Quddoos was unanimously backed to be Nottingham's new sheriff during a meeting earlier in the month.
The civic role involves welcoming visitors and tourists to Nottingham, as well as promoting the city. But in a BBC Radio Nottingham interview on Tuesday (May 30), Councillor Quddoos partly agreed with a previous caller to the station who described Nottingham as a "dump".
Speaking on Sarah Julian's breakfast show, Councillor Quddoos said: "[The caller's] not wrong, there are parts of the city that absolutely are a dump. I represent a ward in the city where we have hotspots which could be better.
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"Unfortunately, the city council doesn't have a bottomless pit of money and if we had a bottomless pit of money, we would deal with those hotspots and areas of the city that are a dump." The caller making the initial comment was taking part in a discussion on new research which claims that people are more depressed if they live in the suburbs, with people being better off living in cities.
But during Jason Rosam's early breakfast show, which is syndicated across the BBC's local network, one caller living on the outskirts of Nottingham said: "I'm four and a half miles from Nottingham, I've only been in once in three years. I hate the place.
"It's a dump now. It's an absolute dump... The city is just going down and down." Despite partially agreeing with the caller, Councillor Quddoos did add that there were lots of reasons to be positive about Nottingham, describing the city overall as a "mixed bag."
She said: "I think that we are an ambitious city, we've got the new children's library, we've got all our plans for the redevelopment of the Broad Marsh, we are reopening the castle. So I think it's a mixed bag, like all cities, there are the places that clearly are a dump, and there are places that are fantastic and beautiful."
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