Opposing View: Is enough progress being made?

A few days ago, almost 4,000 runners from all over the country gathered and ran through our city streets completing a half-marathon. These runners are often the heart and soul of local charities, raising much needed funds for those organisations. I would like to congratulate all the runners and particularly my co-councillor and friend John Howard for not only completing the race but working so hard throughout the year to ensure the event it was delivered on time and without any problems.

We are also actively promoting Stoptober in our city. Stoptober is an annual campaign in the United Kingdom that encourages people to quit smoking for the month of October. Chances are that if you can give up smoking for a month you can do it long term. The lungs start functioning better after 30 days, improving fitness and health.

We have an experienced shadow cabinet, many of whom have held cabinet positions and understand how local democracy should work. What does a shadow cabinet do you may wonder?

We have shadow cabinet meetings where we discuss and review the cabinet meetings ahead of time; our shadow cabinet members also review key decision papers and will ask questions and scrutinise where needed. This is an important part of local government. It’s always good to have a strong opposition as it leads to challenge, and we hope better decision making, too.

This week is a week of major decision making by our city council, and by the time you read this column, the decisions I refer to would have been made. Peterborough First as a group sincerely hopes the right decisions will have been made as some pivotal business comes forward.

Werrington Fields has been well aired and the public view, shared by many councillors, is that a compromise should be sought. When we were in administration we always pursued a compromise. I ordered the review in the decision making of Werrington Fields asking for full details and history in order to reach a compromise. We strongly believe in the safeguarding of our children but equally we want the land to be enjoyed by local residents, as it has been over decades. Our Werrington Peterborough First Independent Councillors have been fighting tooth and nail to achieve a compromise and will continue to do so until it is achieved.

Another issue that again has been well aired is the future of the Hilton hotel. Peterborough First opened the door on many decisions that the public should see when we were the administration, and we have asked this of the Labour administration too. The benefit of our shadow cabinet is to ensure we challenge and open the door to transparency. We do support the most cost-effective way of delivering the hotel and protecting taxpayers’ investment. When we were in administration, I always believed the residents of our city to whom we not only provide services but are also our shareholders, must be kept informed at every stage of every decision. Put simply our policy was transparency, transparency, transparency.

We also see two very lengthy documents discussing a new economic growth strategy and a visitor economy strategy. We would urge the administration not to get lost in these documents; but to create a vision with timely actions by adopting the city centre economic strategy that we left in place. Peterborough First had funding in place for a business case on the Guildhall and to carry out initial works… where has this gone and why has work stopped? Also, major projects such as the Station Quarter and The Vine, that will unlock growth and attract visitors, don’t seem to be making enough progress to meet the funding deadlines. Strategies can focus priorities, but we must not lose sight of the essential tasks in hand.