Political View: Love Where You Live means leading by example

As Cabinet Member for Environment for Peterborough City Council, I want to lead the city into a new era where we can be proud of our city and unlock our potential, writes Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Wiggin.

The council has recently launched a new campaign called “Love Where You Live”. The new community campaign will encourage residents to take pride in our neighbourhoods. The initiative promotes civic pride, environmental responsibility, and community involvement through activities such as litter picking, reporting local issues, supporting local businesses, and volunteering. By bringing residents, community groups, and local organisations together, the campaign aims to create cleaner, greener, safer, and more welcoming communities. 

I meet regularly with community groups both in my ward and across the wider city, including at litter picks and site visits, but we all know that the big problems will not be solved overnight, for example the council receives over 10,500 fly tip reports a year.

The Liberal Democrats in Peterborough have pledged for many years that, if we were in power, we would implement a free bulky waste collection service across the city as part of wider measures to reduce waste, increase reuse and recycling, and tackle fly-tipping.

I am delighted as Cabinet Member for Environment to be delivering on this promise and to be offering each council ward one fully funded bulky waste collection this budgetary year increasing to 2 next year.

I am also delighted to see how well used the Embankment has been this summer. Despite temporary limitations caused by the building works for Cygnet Bridge, events such as Peterborough Beer Festival and Peterborough Pride have proved very successful.

I volunteer at the Beer Festival to give back to the community for the many years I enjoyed the festival previously as a customer, and I am delighted that the festival has been confirmed to return in 2027.

However we must ensure that these events continue to have a home by protecting the Embankment from excessive development.

The Liberal Democrat group would seek to protect and enhance the green space, not concrete over all it.

Some small development is necessary and appropriate for our growing city. The new swimming pool and leisure facility is long overdue. The university is helping our city grow in the right way and will provide more skilled job opportunities in the future.

The Youth Zone will provide a much needed facility for our young people while only taking a small corner of the green space.

This leaves over 60 acres for recreation, major events, biodiversity value, and iconic views of the city and cathedral, which would all be lost if a new football stadium was built on the Embankment.

The Cabinet is developing an updated master plan for the Embankment that balances these competing priorities while ensuring the urban green space is protected for generations to come.

Peterborough has been my home for the majority of my life, and I am working hard to ensure it is a place we can be proud of and that we can all love where we live.