Nottingham City Council is the local authority for the city of Nottingham, in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands region of England. Nottingham has had a council from medieval times, which has been reformed on numerous occasions. Since 1998 the council has been a unitary authority, being a district council which also performs the functions of a county council. Since 2024 the council has been a member of the East Midlands Combined County Authority.

The council has been under Labour majority control since 1991. The council meets at Nottingham Council House and has its main offices at Loxley House.

Nottingham was an ancient borough. The earliest known borough charter was issued by Henry II sometime between 1155 and 1165; that charter did not purport to create the borough, but instead confirmed to it the rights that it had already held in the time of Henry I (reigned 1100–1135). The borough was governed by a corporation, also known as the town council. A later charter of 1284 granted the borough the right to appoint a mayor.^[4]

In 1836 Nottingham became a municipal borough under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. When elected county councils were established in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, Nottingham was considered large enough to provide its own county-level services and so it was made a county borough, independent from Nottinghamshire County Council.^[5]

Nottingham was awarded city status on 7 August 1897, allowing the corporation to call itself Nottingham City Council.^[6] In 1928 the city council was given the right to appoint a lord mayor.^[7]

In 1974 Nottingham became a non-metropolitan district under the Local Government Act 1972, becoming a lower tier authority with Nottinghamshire County Council providing county-level services in the city for the first time. The city kept the same outer boundaries, but did gain an exclave from Nottinghamshire containing the Shire Hall.^[8][9] Nottingham kept its borough and city statuses and its lord mayoralty.^[10][11]

In 1998, Nottingham City Council regained responsibility for county-level services from Nottinghamshire County Council. The way this change was implemented was to create a new non-metropolitan county of Nottingham covering the same area as the existing district, but with no separate county council; instead the existing city council took on county functions, making it a unitary authority. This therefore had the effect of restoring the city council to the powers it had held when Nottingham was a county borough prior to 1974.^[12] Despite having been removed from the non-metropolitan county of Nottinghamshire (the area administered by Nottinghamshire County Council), the city remains part of the wider ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire for the purposes of lieutenancy.^[13]

On 29 November 2023, the council declared itself effectively bankrupt, with a £23m overspend forecast for the 2023-24 financial year.^[14] This has been speculated to be mainly due to the Robin Hood Energy initiative, which was setup by the council in 2015 and was closed in 2020.^[15] Being unable to produce a balanced budget (as required by law), it issued a Section 114 notice which requires all expenditure to cease except for statutory duties.^[16]

In 2024 a combined county authority was established covering Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Derbyshire, called the East Midlands Combined County Authority. The combined authority is chaired by the directly elected Mayor of the East Midlands and oversees the delivery of certain strategic functions across the area.^[17]

As a unitary authority, Nottingham City Council has the functions of a county council and district council combined. There are no civil parishes in Nottingham, which has been an unparished area since the reforms of 1974.^[18]

Full Council meetings are held at Nottingham Council House in the Old Market Square in the city centre, which was completed in 1929 and is now a Grade II* listed building.^[26]

In 2009 the council moved its main offices to Loxley House, a modern office building on Station Street, opposite Nottingham railway station.^[27]

Since the last boundary changes in 2019 the council has comprised 55 councillors representing 20 wards, with each ward electing two or three councillors. Elections are held every four years.^[28]