Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Peterborough City Council.
Like many councils across the country, Peterborough needs certainty, transparency and financial discipline.
If Peterborough residents are confused about the future of their council, I cannot blame them.
For almost two years, Local Government Reorganisation has dominated across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Councillors have spent time and money preparing for the biggest structural change in a generation.
We were preparing for all-out shadow elections in May 2027 and new councils in 2028. Then, on 7 September, the Government pressed pause, what a shambles. The reorganisation is now “under review”, no new timetable has been given, and next May Peterborough will return to normal elections, with a third of the 60 seats contested. This uncertainty unsettles residents, consumes officer time and costs taxpayers money. Peterborough is hardly in a position where money does not matter. The council is forecasting an in-year overspend of around £7.9 million while facing serious pressures on statutory services and diminishing reserves.
Peterborough’s Labour-led administration backed Option D, a three-unitary model creating a Greater Peterborough authority alongside two other councils. This option was not voted through by Full Council; it was put forward on the Labour Leader’s say-so. There is a legitimate argument for retaining Peterborough’s identity as Cambridgeshire’s largest city, and I want our city to have a strong voice too. But identity cannot trump financial reality.
The council’s own comparisons showed Option A, based on two larger unitary authorities, with estimated net annual savings of £12.1 million, implementation costs of around £34 million and a payback period of approximately six years.
For Option D – the one actually submitted to Government, the equivalent figures were just £1.4 million in annual savings, around £41 million in implementation costs and a payback period of more than 50 years.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
Perhaps that may be why the Peterborough LGR announcement was already delayed.
It is crazy to think that a council forecasting a £7.9 million overspend is supporting an option estimated to cost more, save substantially less each year and take decades longer to recover its initial cost. Local identity and democratic accountability matter, but the financial consequences deserved far more than the cursory debate they received.
There is also a wider question about how decisions of this importance are being made.
After Option D had been submitted, the Council Leader recently wrote to the Secretary of State proposing changes to ward representation. The subsequent proposal would reduce representation in many Peterborough wards from three councillors to two, while Central and East would retain three.
These are both strong Labour wards, and East is the Council Leader’s own ward. Coincidence? I think not. It looks and smells a little fishy to me. If some communities are to lose councillor representation while others retain it, residents deserve to know why. If democratic representation is being changed, councillors and political group leaders should be part of that conversation.
Transparency has to mean something.
The same principle applies to Peterborough’s new Local Plan. At the final Cabinet stage, the administration agreed to remove land north-east of Stanground, together with its site-specific policy, from the proposed Plan.
Earlier versions identified around 115 hectares there for strategic employment. That is not a minor drafting amendment. The decision has now been formally called in for scrutiny.
Peterborough is expected to accommodate significant housing growth. Those new residents will need schools, doctors, roads and infrastructure.
They will also need jobs.
You cannot plan for thousands of homes and simply assume employment will look after itself.
Whatever the outcome of the call-in, this is why scrutiny matters. Major decisions should be challenged and councillors able to ask whether a late change is genuinely in Peterborough’s long-term interests.
For Conservatives in Peterborough, our focus is straightforward.
At May’s elections we increased our representation from 10 councillors to 13 and have since grown to 15, becoming the largest group once again on Peterborough City Council.
Labour, as an aside, have only 10 members yet are still running the council, go figure.
Now the expected all-out elections in 2027 have gone too, and we are back to electing by thirds.
Our approach will not change. We will continue to argue for sound finances, proper scrutiny, lower taxation wherever possible, better roads and neighbourhoods, stronger support for businesses and a planning system that understands economic growth means creating jobs as well as building houses.
Peterborough should remain ambitious: attracting investment, regenerating our city centre, improving transport connections and delivering the services residents actually notice.
I am upbeat about our prospects next May, with a new air of optimism and Kemi now at the helm, but we will take nothing for granted. Local elections are won street by street and resident by resident.
Whatever happens with LGR, the basic test of local government remains the same: spend taxpayers’ money carefully, be transparent about major decisions, listen before changing them, and never forget that councils exist to serve residents, not the other way around.
Peterborough deserves that certainty.
We as Conservatives intend to provide it.