Political View: Congratulations to the winners

​But we did have an election for the Mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. And I would like to congratulate Paul Bristow on being elected as the new mayor.

When he was MP for Peterborough, Paul was a great champion in Parliament for our city and I hope he will speak up for us too, where necessary, in the corridors of power at the Combined Authority.

In his election campaign, he promised to "make bus franchising work", and I hope he will do that, as it is vital if we are to have the much improved bus services that a fast growing city like Peterborough needs.

I'd also like to congratulate Kevin Tighe, who was elected as the new councillor for Barnack in a council by-election which also took place on 1 May. Kevin is a former chief executive of Vivacity, who for many years ran leisure and cultural services in Peterborough. As such, he knows how local government in Peterborough works and I have always felt he would make a great councillor. He came very close to winning a council seat as a Liberal Democrat back in 2019 but made it this time round standing as an independent candidate.

The big headline in the county council elections was the success of Reform, who gained over 600 council seats and won control of several county councils.

But it was also great success for the Liberal Democrats. We gained 163 seats and, for the first time ever in a set of council elections, we won more seats than either the Conservative or Labour parties. The Lib Dems gained control of three county councils, including Cambridgeshire, where we gained 11 seats to win an overall majority on the council for the first time in living memory.

Labour did badly across the country, losing 187 seats, but for the Conservatives the elections were an absolute disaster: They were defending just over 900 council seats and managed to lose 674 of them. They went into the elections controlling 16 of the county councils where there were elections and ended up controlling none of them.

So the rise of Reform across England is worrying. But it will be interesting to see what happens now they have to move from being a party of protest to a party which has to run councils. More worrying has been the way in which the Labour and Tory parties nationally have reacted to losing lots of votes and seats to Reform. Labour have started talking like Reform on immigration policy: we need controls on immigration but we also need to recognise the massive benefits that migrants have brought to the UK economy over hundreds of years. The new Conservative leader nationally has started to rubbish efforts to tackle climate change and that has been echoed by the Conservative group leader on Peterborough City Council: both conveniently forgetting that measures like insulating homes properly will give people lower energy bills as well as helping to save our planet.

Finally, a plea to everyone in Peterborough to consider sending in a response to the City Council's consultation on the draft new Local Plan. Rightly or wrongly, Government is imposing mandatory targets for new house building on all councils. So we don't have any choice on numbers but we do have a choice on what types of homes to build and where to build them, as well as trying to ensure that the new communities created have adequate transport, parks and open space, shops and leisure facilities etc. So it really does matter. Please go to the City Council website, follow the links and send in your comments before the consultation close date of 29 May.