Before doing so I just want to address some of the issues raised during the campaign.
It seems the shine on last year’s “Coalition of Chaos” rhetoric was dulled this year, partly I would guess, after it was pointed out that after the 22 years of Conservative control that brought our council to the very edge of bringing in Government administrators, like they had in Conservative controlled Northamptonshire, the current administration had relied on the very same parties they had previously accused of plotting to form a Coalition of Chaos, to assist in reaching a balanced budget through the newly formed Financial Stability Working Group.Who would have thought that bringing together all the parties that make up the council to talk through the issues and arrive at a budget that not only sailed through approval at full council, but set the task for balancing the budget this year at a much more realistic level than we have achieved since I was made a councillor, was possible let alone so effective?
Let’s be clear though that our new CEO Matt Gladstone and his team of dedicated officers did the bulk of this work, and they should be commended on their approach in transforming the council’s management structure and fiscal planning that is fit for purpose going forward.
It seems officers are only mentioned when negative news is released, such as officer led cuts or apologising for mistakes made. Conversely, we hear the Government grants are squarely down to the Conservatives, with huge branded cheques going “on tour” when the reality is hours of officers’ time and being routed through the Combined Authority for cross party approval (we didn’t see Mayor Nik Johnson playing these games) or the more recent Conservative-led initiative for a Youth Zone for the city when it was clearly an idea brought forward by our new CEO Matt Gladstone (having previous implemented a similar scheme at his previous local authority)
This year’s surprise was the revelation that “rumours exist” about secret plans for congestion charging in Peterborough being cooked up by the Lib Dems – citing Cambridge and Oxford city plans for congestion charging – both cities having far different traffic levels and congestion. Levels of congestion in Peterborough are so low as not to really count here. I remember the days in the early 90’s when Saturday mornings meant real queuing to get into town from all directions. They could have checked our website and found our published manifesto for all to see, (I am still unable to find any manifestos for the other parties on their websites). Interesting also that the Conservative cabinet met on 14th November 2022 and approved the Local Area Energy Plan which states “A low emissions zone could help accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.”On a happier note, our election result of winning four seats to keep all our previously elected Councillors still in post, only ourselves and Peterborough First were able to do so, went according to plan. Next year we only have one seat to defend which gives us much more scope to increase our numbers. With the national results showing over a thousand losses to the Conservatives the prospect of a General Election seems later rather than sooner, whilst they scramble about looking to see what changes they can make to repair the damage.
With the elections now done, we do however need to return to the encouraging cross-party cooperation that saw better outcomes for the citizens of our city before the lead-up to the election period, I feel our residents want to see all parties fully engaging in that process and working on tackling the issues we all face.
Hopefully this year the focus won’t need to be so much financial but more on how the council’s transformation can help deliver services that better meet the needs of our residents and tackle the areas that have seen neglect that now are in desperate need for action.