Peterborough First's Opposition View column: Time to make some hard decisions

As we are seeing at every level of Government, tough decisions are being made. The days of waving flags at Tony Blairs arrival into Downing Street, and the optimism of a youthful energetic David Cameron seem a long, long time ago.

Political changes always bring hope, but in this period its more about who is best equipped to make very hard decisions than it is any sense of new vision or perspective.

Locally, two very weighty subjects have been faced by the new local Labour administration. Werrington fields has been a matter that should’ve been resolved many years ago. Had better decision making been apparent, this could, and should have been resolved in 2019. It’s not good enough that this saga still carries on, and this is why Peterborough First paused the decision making to carry out a full investigation into the legacy of recommendations and decision making that seems to have not offered a sensible outcome at any time since 2019. With the call-in on the decision, we hope we can find some sense and a level of compromise. Again, this is about who is best equipped to make hard decisions and we hope the new Labour administration listens to the community and politicians of all persuasions. The City is watching.

The Dementia Centre funding reduction has caused much upset, and many will know how passionate I am personally about the provision of a Dementia Centre in Peterborough. During the six months of a Peterborough First administration, I committed a lot of time and energy to ensure in the asset review that we protected the provision of the centre and that it wouldn’t be made homeless.

Whilst I am proud that we fought the corner on the physical location offer, I am of course deeply saddened about the funding reduction.

Across the political spectrum, nobody wants to see a reduction in this service so I am now working with the Cabinet member and the officer team to ensure we protect this service as best we can and ensure the core provision and support remains in the new location that we fought so hard to ensure was provided.

Listening to the Chancellor’s initial announcements, it is clear that local councils across the country will not be receiving any further support. As many creep towards effective insolvency, it will become ever harder to keep the books balanced.

As a Council, we must continue to be a compassionate council and ensure that we protect the most vulnerable in our City, whilst doing all we can to offer more growth and opportunity to those in our City too. One of the critical focuses of the current city finances will be the success of the local asset review.

Libraries and community centres play vital parts in our communities, and in our time in administration the emphasis was to ensure no user group was made homeless as part of the review. It was a chance to look at things differently, where the sale of some unused buildings would generate cash to revitalise other spaces that were in high use and benefited local communities. And it’s a time to do things differently, where our much-loved local libraries can stretch their legs and do more for their local communities. Coffee shop, Amazon collection space, prescription collection-there are so many possibilities that would help make our libraries financially self-sustainable. This vision for our community spaces must be exhausted by the new administration. We should seize the moment of the financial pressures and ensure the community spaces are revitalised in a brave way that makes them fit to serve for the future whilst being less of a financial burden to the City too. Both these objectives can be achieved if done the right way.

As the second largest group in the council chamber, I am proud to serve in the shadow cabinet. As a collective group of independents, the benefit to the city we will bring is that we are not held ransom by any local ‘backer’ or funder, we are impartial in every way .

In the meantime, can I ask anyone who can volunteer and support this years Great Eastern Run can now register. More info can be found at https://www.greateastern.run