Opinion: Can we look forward to a new era under Labour or will reality be more of the same?

Now that the UK elections are out of the way we can now see how the new Labour administration will work with two newly elected Labour MPs and a Labour combined authority mayor.

Hopefully, between them they will have the ears of the elected Labour Westminster government and that could mean vital funds and policies to improve our region and specifically our city.

Liberal Democrats had a very successful general election too, with the largest-ever number of MPs from our party being elected, including 3 from Cambridgeshire. Our MPs will be keeping a close eye on the new government and where necessary holding them to account if things go wrong, but more importantly looking to engage with them in order to get the best outcomes for the citizens of the UK.

In Peterborough, your Liberal Democrat Councillors will be keeping a close eye on the Labour administration and, where necessary, holding them to account too. With only 19 councillors (just less than a third of all councillors) they don’t have the supermajority that their colleagues from Westminster have, so I would hope they take a leaf out of the book of the previous Peterborough First administration that worked cross-party by engaging with other groups and led to better decision making.

The Conservatives may have taken a battering in the recent elections but they seem to be bouncing back with promises to do their bit to hold the new administrations to account. Although currently there seems to be a certain amount of amnesia on some of the issues they are currently flag waving. The first of which is a replacement for the City’s Regional Pool, a city asset that was left by them to deteriorate whilst they were in administration.

They say they had a plan to replace the pool but all they could produce was a plan from 2020 that never went anywhere. Now they are calling for a 50m pool, diving facilities and spectator seating for swimming galas, topped off with a hydrotherapy pool (the one they promised in New England never amounted to anything either.) All very laudable features, but none of which are featured in their 2020 plan document, still now they aren’t tasked with finding the finances I suppose the sky is the limit.

Getting back to our new Labour administration I made representations at a recent cabinet meeting against the decision for the council to hand over an expanse of land (around 8 football pitches) to the Ken Stimson Academy and to have said land fenced off, restricting access to the general public, who have viewed and used it as open space provision for the community.

I was not alone and there were some impassioned speeches from members of the public and Sarah Hillier on behalf of the local councillors. Were they calling for the school to only have a two football pitch sized field that the school had originally asked for? No, a much more reasonable reduction to four football pitches. They recognised the need for the school to have a secure outside space for physical education needs.

And this all fell on deaf ears from the cabinet, no questions were raised and there was no debate and the leader read out a prepared speech waving the item through. Déjà vu of cabinet meetings held by the Conservative cabinet. The decision has now been called into Scrutiny and I hope that we can get a rethink and workable compromise for both the school and the community it serves.

It is still early days for this new administration, so I hope this was just a case of them still growing into their roles. They need to reach out to councillors from other parties and listen to the electorate that voted them in to represent them. Peterborough is still facing its challenges and we all need to pull together to get us through. Peterborough deserves a better deal and it needs a council that can deliver.