Peterborough City Council is harnessing the insights of business leaders to shape plans for wealth and jobs growth

​Business leaders in Peterborough have been invited to shape new plans to drive the city’s wealth and jobs growth.

​About 40 business people from a range of companies outlined their thoughts on the challenges and opportunities facing the city and gave some suggestions on the solutions during a two hour brain-storming meeting.

Tom Hennessy, chief executive of economic development company Opportunity Peterborough, which hosted the workshop at the city’s Holiday Inn West, Thorpe Wood, told guests that work is currently being carried out by Peterborough City Council and consultants to produce three strategies to bolster the city economy and boost jobs and training.

These are an economic growth strategy, an employment and skills strategy and a revision of the Local Plan, which determines the location of commercial and housing development across the city.

He said: “Peterborough is one of the fastest growing cities in the country by population but productivity is not growing as quickly.

"How can we become more profitable and sustainable and create secure well paid jobs for the people of Peterborough?”

Among a range of concerns were a mismatch of skills, a perception of the city as ‘unsafe’ in the evenings, poor transport connectivity and parking, a lack of retail and dining attractions in the centre, a lack of development land and a sense of too much talk that ‘trashed’ Peterborough.

Afterwards, William Rose, director of property agents Savills in Peterborough, who attended the meeting, said: “It was good they wanted to engage with the local business community and I hope it was useful.

"It will be interesting to see what they glean from our feedback.

He added: "As a city we are in desperate need for more employment land.”

Leah Smith, community manager with Native Space, at Bourges View, Peterborough, said: “Peterborough gets a bad rap but workshops such as these highlight all the positive work that goes into improving the city both culturally and economically.”

Mr Hennessy said: “I think this meeting is representative of business views across the city. We have businesses from different sectors.

"As has been identified by some of these groups, we need to work harder to make sure we are engaging with the diverse communities we have here and the business leaders within those communities to make sure the economic growth strategy we’ve got reflects the needs of all businesses.

"This will feed into what our consultants are doing. We will produce a report from this meeting which will go to the consultants and which will inform how we prioritise activity, actions and policies going forward.

“And it is really important they reflect the needs of businesses. It is not something we are developing in isolation.”