Mansfield

Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. Mansfield is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area. The town is surrounded by a pocket of steep hills within the Maun Valley. The district of Mansfield is a largely urban area situated in the north west of Nottinghamshire populated by 99,600 residents of whom the vast majority live in Mansfield (including Mansfield Woodhouse), with Market Warsop a secondary centre, and the remainder in the rural north of the District. Adjacent to the urban area of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Mansfield is the only major sub-regional centre in Nottinghamshire covering an area of 78 square kilometres. The Centre for Cities (2009) recognises Mansfield as one of Britain's cities by categorising the town as a 'small city'.

Mansfield is the only local authority area in the county to have a directly elected Mayor and in October 2008 Mansfield elected its first Youth Mayor.

Historically, the district has been influenced heavily by its industrial past with coal mining and textiles' thriving in the district until their decline in the 1980s, but in common with the national economy the area has seen the decline of these sectors. Mansfield has 20.2% (12,890) of its working age population seeking key out of work benefits (based on a 63,800 total working age population) (NOMIS).

Over the last century the population has declined in parallel with this traditional industrial base. However much has been done to diversify the economic base and to replace jobs lost. Mid-year population forecasts reveal that since April 2008 the population has gone from 100,100 to 100,600 in 2009, 99,700 in 2010 to the current figure of 99,600 in 2011.