I have lived in Peterborough since 1984. Like many people I relocated with a company from London: in my case Lloyds Life Assurance, who later became part of the Royal Insurance Group. I had never really wanted to go to London in the first place after I left college…but that is another story! I remember being brought up to Peterborough and taken on a coach tour by the Peterborough Development Corporation, including afternoon tea at the Key Theatre. I remember also the glossy brochures with the full colour photos where every sky was a blue one and every landscape was an alluring shade of green. But actually Peterborough is a really green city in the sense that there are lots of trees and large expanses of grass. A few years ago the city announce an ambition to become greener still. All the road approaches to Peterborough now boast a sign saying “Welcome to Peterborough, Creating the UK’s Environment Capital”. As readers probably know, my party colour is yellow but I am at heart a bit of a greenie. I strongly support the ambition being driven forward by the City Council, Peterborough Environment City Trust and other partners for Peterborough to become environment capital. But I am equally clear in my mind that we should not make a claim to be something we are not, or to claim an accolade before we fully deserve it. If we are honest….and even in politics it usually is the best policy….. Peterborough’s green record is strong in parts but overall rather patchy. I mentioned the green grass but most of it is intensively mown, costing the council a fortune and doing little for wildlife interest. On the positive side, many of our schools do excellent work in promoting environmentally friendly behaviour among their students and staff. Many companies pioneering green technologies have chosen to base themselves here in Peterborough. Our daytime commercial bus service is every 10 minutes in many places and the rate of growth in passenger numbers is the envy of many other similar cities. But our Council has just made the biggest cut in public transport subsidy in Peterborough’s history, which will have a damaging effect on many rural services, Sunday services and less well used ones in the urban area. We have one of Britain’s largest networks of segregated cycle ways (including the Green Wheel), yet numbers of people cycling remain surprisingly low. For many years, we have been pioneers in recycling but our performance is now deteriorating and the Council now has plans to spend nearly £90 million on a waste incinerator. Efforts to reduce waste have failed miserably and we generate more waste per head of population than most other cities in the country. There has only ever been one objective measure of Peterborough’s environmental performance. A few years ago, Jonathan’ Porritt’s organisation, Forum for the Future, ran us through their sustainable cities index and we came out about halfway up a list of 21 cities ranked in order of environmental and sustainability performance, ranked against a series of criteria. What is really important is that any claims to be “Environment Capital” must be objectively measured and capable of being sustained. It is great to be working towards this environmental goal but to be credible it must be more than just a Council sponsored PR slogan. We have too many of those already. So it is good to hear that PECT and the City Council are working on an Environment Capital Action Plan which will, we are told, contain specific and measurable short and long term targets and not just vague aspirations. The environment may not be at the top of everyone’s agenda right now but with evidence of accelerating climate change and vulnerability of much of the land around Peterborough to any sea level rise, environment should be pretty near the top of our agenda here in Peterborough. Nick Sandford Liberal Democrat Group Leader Peterborough City Council.
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 18:35:03 +0000