Peterborough city centre re-opening praised on mayor’s walkabout

On a walkbout around Queensgate and the city centre on Monday (June 15), Mayor Palmer met retailers and praised the work that has gone into organising safe shopping routines and also heard from some traders about what improvements still need to be made.

“It’s lovely to come into Peterborough and see people milling around, respecting the guidelines, doing their shopping and enjoying the sunshine,” he said.

“People can come in and engage in safe shopping and support local businesses. We want people to come in and shop, we want them to feel safe and we want them to support local businesses. A tremendous amount of work has gone into ensuring they can do this.”

Manager of Holland and Barratt in Long Causeway, Jo Joyce said there had been some frustrations with issues around queues which over-lapped.

“It has been frustrating at some points,” she said. “The queues from a neighbouring retailer blocked the entrance to our store and that caused some issues.”

She said police and marshals were in the city centre but added more could be done to manage the queues with not all retailers having marked out two-metre queue spacing outside their stores.

Mayor Palmer agreed there are still lessons to be learned.

“There is no manual for this,” he said. “No-one has encountered a situation like this before and we are learning all the time as issues arise and we will react quickly to try to deal with them.”

In nearby Boots general manager Craig Wilkinson said the store had seen a greatly increased footfall this week.

“We saw three times the people that we did the previous Monday,” he said. “We have worked very closely with Queensgate and it has gone really well.”

There were long queues to get into Queensgate on Monday morning and some retailers, including Primark and Sports Direct had waiting times of an hour or more to get in at the peak.

During yesteday many of the queues subsided and volunteer Town Centre Marshals Rachel Fisher, Janice Osborn, Barnabas Brunner. and Sue Prior reported a good response from shoppers.

Sue said: “It has gone well. Everyone was very calm and considerate. We have found people have been co-operative and polite.

“I’ve had several queries and we have tried to give guidance and support people with social distancing.”

Barnabus added: “It has been very busy and there were a lot of people here in the morning. People did try to keep social distancing and people were co-operating.”

The government placed the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority mayor in charge of co-ordinating Cambridge and Peterborough’s ‘unlockdown’ operation through the City Centre Exit Strategy group. Mayor Palmer has been working with a range of expert partners to develop joint action for rescue and recovery. In recent weeks, local MPs, council chiefs and business leaders have also used the Mayor’s Forum to shape the region’s economic bounceback, and to give the government feedback on what the region needs to weather the Covid-19 fallout.

The Mayor’s Forum has co-ordinated the county-wide efforts to kickstart the regional economy, keep people safe, and attract customers back to the shops as the lockdown restrictions are eased.