Hannah Gray meets a man who was instrumental in building the thousands of houses which brought new residents to Peterborough.

It's hard to imagine another job where you would be able to say you helped house 40,000 families, but, as Peterborough Development Corporation's housing manager from 1970 to 1988, that is exactly what Gerry Burns did.

Gerry came to Peterborough aged 35 from Brighton, where he was deputy housing manager.

He was attracted by the opportunity to start a project from scratch – and what a huge project it was.

In the space of 20 years, the development corporation built more than 10,000 new homes to rent and 500 for shared ownership.

Gerry started working for the development corporation in May 1970, and initially thought he would stay in the city for just three years. But he and his family settled here and today he is still a resident of Longthorpe.

Peterborough was in the third wave of new towns established around the country, along with places such as Milton Keynes and Northampton.

Moving families from London to our city meant not only that it improved the quality of life for thou- sands, but also that Peterborough's many engineering firms had a pool of talented labour coming in, as people applying for houses through the development corporation had to have offers of work from a Peterborough firm.

To prevent a point in the future when Peterborough would be faced with an ageing population, as part of the planning, Gerry and his staff made sure to bring in a mix of different types of people, and with both singletons and families.

Statisticians and social development workers advised the corporation on the correct mix of housing to build, and flats, bungalows and houses were constructed.

It is not hard to imagine, that for those 40,000 families, arriving in Peterborough after living in over- crowded London was like moving to a new world. So how did these new residents feel about their move?

"They were delighted," Gerry said.

"They were delighted with the green spaces, and the houses, although they were terraced houses mainly, they were large.

The bedrooms were large, there was lots of storage space, they had their own back gardens which they'd never had before."

But while the city's new residents may have been delighted with their move up north, some of its existing ones greeted the planned houses with concern. Workers could come for an interview in Peterborough, be offered a job and within three weeks have moved into their brand new house.

Given that the city council, like many local authorities, had a waiting list for social housing, there was some resentment that newcomers could be housed so quickly.

However, this did, in time, solve itself.

More than 30 years after the building of the new areas of the city commenced, Gerry said he found being involved in such a huge and important project exciting. I think the corporation was justifiably proud of what it achieved," he said.

"If you look at the development of the town in that period, I think we did a good job."