Local elections 23: Rallying troops and campaigning

As we always say, if you don't vote, how can you then moan about the decisions that are taken on your behalf? So, if you're not registered to vote, make sure you do it ahead of Monday's (17th) deadline and put your vote in the ballot box on 4 May.

Go online to the council’s website www.peterborough.gov.uk to get all the details on how to register to vote and for more information on voter ID which is required this year if you are to vote in person at your nominated polling station.

The Conservatives have as usual managed to field a full slate of candidates in this year’s elections so you will have the chance to vote for a Conservative candidate in each and every ward across the city - and in the case of Park ward, it is two candidates. The Conservative party chairman Greg Hands was on hand at the weekend to rally the troops and lead the campaigning locally. However, it has not gone unnoticed by us and others that there are some tactical election pacts in play here with certain party candidates missing in a number of wards. This presumably is to give the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats a better chance of winning - something I am sure they will of course deny.

Being slightly more political. We all had a good old chuckle last week when reading the latest account in this paper from Cllr Dennis Jones, the new political mouthpiece for the Labour party here in Peterborough.

He does need some correcting though as it is simply not true to say that “the improvement panel insisted on the creation of a financial sustainability working group”. In fact, this is something the current leader of the council asked the former Chief Executive Gillian Beasley to create back in September 2021, long before we even had an improvement panel. This was done to ensure that we all worked collaboratively together to take us towards financial sustainability. So far, we think it has been working well.

It has not gone unnoticed either that he insists it’s time for a change – we agree it’s time that Labour changed its tune. We have heard the same song over and over and they have still not come to the table with any policies or a tangible plan for you, the public, to consider that will keep this city moving forward. Instead, they bang out the same lefty clap trap which in the end can only mean higher taxes and poorer council services, which is the case with the majority of Labour run councils up and down the country.

The Labour party in Peterborough remains in total disarray with many members either being kicked out or suspended or not reselected as candidates for a variety of reasons. They could not even get agreement to select a local parliamentary candidate.

We’ll end this week on a more positive note. We continue to strengthen our children’s and adult services team and can announce that John Gregg has been appointed Executive Director of Children’s Services. John has had a career that has involved working with children spanning 30 years, 28 of those as a social worker. He is currently Director of Children’s Services at Coventry City Council where he took the council’s children’s services from inadequate to good. Prior to that he held roles with Ofsted, including Deputy Director, Social Care.

Additionally, we have also appointed Stephen Taylor as Executive Director of Adult Social Services. Stephen has 30 years’ experience of working in health and social care and has worked in leadership roles across health and local government for 22 of these. He is currently Corporate Director of Adult Social Services and Interim Transformation Director at the London Borough of Islington. Here he is leading and developing an ambitious change programme, to increase independence and reduce the need for long-term care.

We welcome them both.