Worksop Drug Dealer Caught in Skegness, Nottingham Police Officer Shooting Update, Plastics Recycling Facility Approved & More
Good morning readers and a happy Thursday to you all. Why not grab a brew and a chocolate digestive, sit back for five minutes peace and enjoy today's newsletter.
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Today's Quote of the Day - "The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too." Vincent van Gogh
Enjoy the read and have a great day wherever you are in Bassetlaw.
Justin Doddy, Editor
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Suspect Charged following Nottingham Police Officer Shooting
A suspect has been charged with multiple offences after a police officer was shot while attending an incident in the city centre.
Lea Anderson, 31, has been charged with possession of a firearm to endanger life, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and possession of a prohibited weapon.
Anderson, of Commercial Road, Nottingham, has been remanded into custody and will appear before Nottingham Magistrates' Court on Thursday (5 November).
The incident happened at a bus stop in Angel Row, Nottingham city centre, around 4.50am on Sunday 18 October.
The officer approached two people acting suspiciously and received a gunshot wound to the foot. He remains in hospital receiving treatment.
Anyone with information that could help police inquiries are still being urged to call 101 quoting incident 106 of 18 October 2026 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Nottinghamshire Drug Dealer Caught in Skegness
Police closed in on a drug dealer with the help of the Lincolnshire Drone Team after he fled from Nottinghamshire to a caravan park in Skegness.
Jake Hawkins was locked up after pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs - namely cocaine.
Through a police investigation it was suspected the 31-year-old was involved in drugs supply in the Worksop area. Neighbourhood officers seized multiple items linking Hawkins to drug dealing after executing a warrant at his home in Milton Drive, Worksop, on 4 March 2024.These included scales with white powder residue, deal bags with drug remnants and three Rolex watches.
At the same time another team of neighbourhood officers went to Hawkins' business unit in Worksop, arrested him and seized items including his mobile phone.
A digital examination of his phone found multiple incriminating messages between Hawkins and other contacts, including arrangements to buy wholesale quantities of cocaine for onward supply.
Hawkins had been due to be sentenced for his drugs charge at Nottingham Crown Court on 16 October this year but he left court before his sentencing that afternoon, prompting a bench warrant to be issued by the court for his arrest.
Thanks to some good intelligence work, Hawkins was tracked down to a caravan park in Skegness. With the help of Lincolnshire Police colleagues and their drone, which showed Hawkins enjoying a spot of fishing, he was arrested by Bassetlaw Neighbourhood Policing Team officers on Wednesday 28 October.
The next day Hawkins was back at Nottingham Crown Court where he was given a prison sentence of three years and nine months. Inspector Rob Harrison, district commander for Bassetlaw, said:
"We recovered clear evidence showing Hawkins was involved in the serious supply of Class A drugs, including drug paraphernalia and items we recovered from his address and conversations found on his phone.
“We know Class A drugs ruin the lives of very vulnerable people in our communities and, as our work in this case demonstrates, we will continue to take robust action to target those involved in the supply of illegal drugs and use all available resources to disrupt drug-related criminality.
"Those involved in dealing drugs will face the strongest possible enforcement action as we carry out intelligence-led warrants against local offenders.
"They can expect to be firmly dealt with and put before the courts to face the consequences."
Worksop Plastics Recycling Facility narrowly approved by Council Planners
By Lauren Monaghan, LDRS
Plans for a new plastics recycling plant in Worksop have narrowly been approved despite more than 1,200 residents signing a petition against it.
Envale UK tabled plans for the new plastic chemical recycling facility, with an energy recovery facility, on an old recycling site in Worksop.
Nottinghamshire County Council’s planning committee gave the plans the go ahead on Tuesday (November 3), with a narrow vote of six in favour of the scheme and five against.
The brownfield site, located at the western edge of the town and accessed from Shireoaks Road, was historically used for the manufacturing of coal products and as a brickworks.
In 2006 permission was granted for a waste transfer and recycling facility on site, but this facility did not materialise. However, planning permission for the scheme remains in force to this day.
The operator of the former facility, NRL, was subject to environmental enforcement action in 2013 requiring the removal of waste. Shortly after this notice was served, four serious fires within 12 months happened on the site, destroying buildings and machinery, with NRL collapsing into administration in early 2014.
Envale says the new plant will prevent 24,369 tonnes each year of non-recyclable residual waste from going to landfill and will generate up to 10 megawatts of heat and 2.5 megawatts of electricity – which is enough to power more than 650 homes every year.
It will achieve this through the plant containing a materials recovery facility, an energy recovery facility and a plastic chemical recycling facility, which it will break down plastics via a method called pyrolysis.
Within this process, waste plastic will be delivered into a heated sealed chamber, heated to around 500 degrees Celsius in the absence of oxygen which causes the plastic polymer to “crack” into smaller molecules until it becomes liquid and gas hydrocarbons, similar to those used to make plastics in the first place.
This mixture is known as pyrolysis oil which can then be used for other processes.
While the scheme has avoided objections from most statutory consultees, Bassetlaw District Council planning committee objected against it in 2024. It also received more than 900 objections in the original consultation, with residents’ concerns including those for air quality, odour, noise and traffic.
Lesley Deamer, speaking on behalf of the Shireoaks and Rhodesia Against Plastic Pyrolysis (SRAPP) group in Tuesday’s meeting, said:
“One fundamental concern remains – that this is simply the wrong location for this type of development.
“Location matters. People matter. And the communities who will have to live with the consequences of the decision today matter”, adding the development is in the “heart” of an established, growing community.
Rhodesia Parish Council has also objected, while a petition against the plans has been signed by more than 1,200 residents.
Speaking on behalf of the parish council, Ms Deamer told the committee: “Over the past 20 years, this area has undergone significant transformation. Homes have been built, businesses have invested and communities have grown.
“What was once regarded as an industrial area is now a place where people work, live, raise families and enjoy the surrounding countryside – this progress matters and it must not be put at risk by an inappropriate development.”
Tom Bagley, speaking on behalf of Envale, told the committee the waste local plan identifies a “significant shortfall is residual waste treatment capacity” and that the plan notes landfill capacity is “effectively exhausted”.
He said:
“Rather than burning or burying this hard-to-recycle plastics, this process provides a circular route back into the manufacturing of new materials.
“This proposal regenerates an existing waste site… The local plan requires waste treatment facilities to be located in suitable locations well related to urban areas – Worksop is indemnified within the local plan as requiring new waste infrastructure.
“This site is allocated in the Bassetlaw District local plan as an existing employment site – it is therefore precisely the type of location that both the Waste Local Plan and the Bassetlaw local plan identify for this form of development.”
Mr Bagley said the scheme benefits from a “comprehensive” Environmental Impact Assessment, which has assessed the impacts on site access, human health, air quality, emissions and noise levels. Plans have received no objections from the highway, public health and environmental health teams.
He added:
“Exhaust gasses pass through multiple stages of cleaning to remove pollutants before being released… the facility will include a continuous emissions monitoring system which monitors emissions in real time.”
The United Kingdom Without Incineration Network asked for two extra conditions to be added to the scheme if it was to be approved, relating to the plant operating at “R1 status” – designating it as a ‘recovery’ facility rather than a ‘disposal’ facility – and restrictions on what is being burnt.
Plans were narrowly approved, with six councillors voting in favour and five voting against.
Previous schemes, including a waste transfer and recycling facility in 2006 that failed to materialise, were granted for vehicle movements of up to 200 per day.
Envale says vehicle movements would be well under this at around 50 heavy goods vehicle movements daily, plus a maximum of 60 staff vehicle movements each day.
The site currently shares an access road with the neighbouring Worksop Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC), operated on behalf of Nottinghamshire County Council by Veolia.
Mayor suggests she’ll stand again for election as she has ‘unfinished business’
East Midlands Mayor Claire Ward has all but confirmed she’ll stand for election again in 2028 after her inaugural four-year term comes to an end.
It’s been two and a half years since the former Labour MP took her post as head of the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA), beating Conservative candidate Ben Bradley to become the first Mayor of the East Midlands in May 2024.
Since then, she’s secured nearly £100m for housing projects on brownfield land, reinstated lost bus services and provided free bus passes to young people in rural areas.
And asked on Thursday, October 29, whether she’s decided on her future, the Mayor told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that she has “unfinished business”.
She said:
“I’ve done a lot, but I’ve got a lot to do in the next year, year and a half, and I think I’ve got a lot more to do, and I want the opportunity to see that delivery taking place and transforming the lives of people in this region for the better.
“The people of this region will decide. It’s their choice about whether or not they think that I have made a good start, and whether they want me to continue, and we’ll come to that in May 2028.
“I will set out the progress that I’ve made on my manifesto. My manifesto was really clear – it had lots of commitments in it. But I’ve really made some good progress on some of those.”
Ms Ward was elected around three months after EMCCA was established, becoming the latest devolved strategic authority in England.
At the time, the authority was completely new and needed to be built from the ground up.
The Mayor has previously called her job “the best job in the world.”
She said:
“Four years is not a long time, particularly given that I walked into an organisation that was pretty non-existent, and when you spend the first year getting the things in place that you need, that capability and capacity and place, to be able to make the investments, to respond to the needs of things like bus companies going under (and) the skills agenda.
“We built that up, and we built up the hundreds of millions of pounds that are coming out the door. There’s a huge amount to do, and I think it’s going to get even a bigger agenda in the next couple of years.”
Most recently, EMCCA has been responsible for launching Visit East Midlands, the new tourist board for the region, which hopes to boost tourism across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire by £1m by 2035.
The Mayor will also soon have the power to decide whether to bring in an “overnight visitor levy” – colloquially known as a tourist tax, which would see tourists pay an extra one or two pounds per night as part of their accommodation bill when staying overnight in either city or county.
Keep The Ball Rolling: Worksop bus operator launches miles of awareness for men’s mental health
Stagecoach East Midlands is inviting customers and communities across the region to help ‘Keep The Ball Rolling’ this November, as part of its partnership with Andy's Man Club and a campaign designed to raise miles of awareness for men's mental health.
The campaign launches this week to coincide with Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, with Sean Gill from Andy's Man Club handing over a specially branded awareness football to Leigh Barker, a local bus driver and passionate advocate for the charity. The ball is beginning a unique journey across the Stagecoach East Midlands bus network.
Inspired by the way a football is passed around during Andy's Man Club sessions to give every person the opportunity to speak, the awareness ball will travel from depot to depot, team to team, and role to role, helping to spark conversations about men's mental health along the way.
Drivers, engineers, office teams and frontline employees will take the ball on different parts of its journey, sharing stories, photos and conversations as they help spread the charity's message: #ITSOKAYTOTALK.
Customers are also being encouraged to keep an eye out for the awareness ball as it travels across the East Midlands network.
Whether it's spotted on a bus, at a depot or out in the community, every sighting represents another mile travelled and another opportunity to start a conversation about mental health.
The campaign is the latest chapter in Stagecoach East Midlands' growing partnership with Andy's Man Club, which began with a series of awareness initiatives across the region including specially branded buses carrying mental-health messages, community engagement events and awareness campaigns designed to encourage people to seek support when they need it.
The partnership has also received national recognition, with Stagecoach East Midlands recently being shortlisted in the Bus in the Community category at the UK Bus Awards, recognising the impact the partnership with Andys Man Club has had in supporting communities and raising awareness of men's mental health.
Matt Cranwell, Stagecoach East Midlands Managing Director said:
"At Stagecoach East Midlands, we're committed to supporting the wellbeing of our people and the communities we serve. Through our partnership with Andy's Man Club, we've seen first-hand the difference that open and honest conversations can make in helping to break down stigma around men's mental health.
"Keep The Ball Rolling is a simple but powerful campaign that takes an important message into our depots, onto our buses and into communities across the East Midlands. Every mile the ball travels represents another opportunity to raise awareness, encourage conversation and remind someone that support is available.
"We're proud that our work with Andy's Man Club has been recognised through our shortlisting in the UK Bus Awards Bus in the Community category. It reflects the strength of this partnership and our shared ambition to make a positive difference. We would encourage everyone to keep an eye out for the awareness ball as it travels across our network and help us spread the message that it's okay to talk."
Sean Gill, Andy’s Man Club Regional Lead - East of England, added:
“What I love about this idea is that it takes something so simple and turns it into something that could have a massive impact.
“At Andy’s Man Club, we know that sometimes all it takes is one conversation to make a difference to someone’s life. The ball we pass around our groups gives every man the opportunity to speak, but just as importantly, it gives everyone the opportunity to listen.
“Taking that message out across the Stagecoach network is a brilliant way to remind people that mental health doesn’t stop when we go to work. Whether you’re behind the wheel, in the workshop, in the depot or in the office, we all have mental health, and we all have a part to play in looking out for one another.
“I’m incredibly proud to see Stagecoach helping to keep this conversation moving. If passing a ball from team to team gets people talking, checking in with each other and feeling more comfortable in opening up, then it’s doing exactly what we want it to do.
“Because you never know what someone is going through behind the scenes, and sometimes asking ‘Are you okay?’ and taking the time to listen can make all the difference.
“Let’s keep the ball rolling and keep spreading the message that #ITSOKAYTOTALK.”
-- Find out more about Andy’s Man Club at www.andysmanclub.co.uk.
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Justin Doddy, Editor
Bassetlaw Today
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