Opinion: ‘ Fighting Covid-19, a new city school and cafe culture in Peterborough.’

The past six months have been extremely challenging for us all, but one big positive is the way communities have come together to help those in need.

To celebrate this and determine how we can continue to support each other, city community leaders took part in a special summit last week.

We discussed how we can work together to re-energise and reinvigorate our efforts to keep our communities safe, our businesses open and put our economy back on a firm footing.

It was a very positive event, highlighting some of the fantastic work that has taken place in recent months - once again thank you to everyone involved for their sterling efforts.

Moving forwards you will see some visible council and police patrols across the city as we continue to work with our partners to control the spread of Covid-19. We’re also going to be increasing our work with businesses to make sure they are operating in a Covid-secure way and continuing to push messages out to our communities to ensure as many people as possible are following the rules. We were one of the first areas in the county to produce translated public health messages and this has helped to reduce the spread of the virus in recent months.

We remain committed to promoting testing locally, ensuring everyone who needs a test can get one. We will do this by providing a walk-in testing site in Central Peterborough and by providing support through our local hub for people who are struggling to access a test, either because of a language barrier or transport issue.

We also want to remove any barriers which are stopping people from self-isolating if they have been asked to by NHS Test and Trace. A big part of this is the financial aspect and so this week we’re launching a support scheme which will offer £500 payments to people who cannot self-isolate for financial reasons. To be eligible you will need to meet certain criteria – see www.peterborough.gov.uk/selfisolationpayment

The rates of infection in Peterborough are below the England average, but they are still higher than they have been in a number of months.

It is vital that we don’t throw away what we’ve achieved so far, so please continue to follow the national guidance and stay vigilant at all times.

One of the key challenges that our education team faces is creating new school spaces to meet the needs of our growing population.

On this front, there was some great news this week, with the opening of Hampton Lakes Primary School (pictured) which will provide spaces for 420 children in the area along with 26 nursery spaces.

I was delighted that pupils, teachers and staff were finally able to celebrate moving into their fantastic new building, because the project has faced a number of challenges. I would like to say a big well done to everybody involved in this project, you have created a state-of-the-art facility.

As regular readers will know, I take great pride in the work we’ve done to enhance the city centre over the past few years.

It’s now an attractive and thriving area, but there is always more we can do, so I was thrilled to hear that our bid to help create a European cafe culture in the city has been successful.

The £800,000 grant from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority will be invested in awnings, modern LED lighting and artwork to extend the alfresco dining/drinking season into spring, summer and autumn in 2021.

Most importantly the new look will help hospitality businesses to trade safely, in line with current Covid-19 guidance.

We’ve worked with partners and local businesses to make the application after it was recognised as an opportunity for pubs, restaurants and cafes to help recover from Covid-19 by attracting additional visitors.

By the way, the city is fairing well despite Covid-19 and has already bounced back to 97 per cent of its footfall (end of August 2020) – well above the national average.

We all have our part to play in helping the economy to recover, so please make the most of fantastic shops, bars, cafes and restaurants.

Finally, this week saw the successful transfer of leisure and cultural services in the city from Vivacity to new providers.

Arts, culture and heritage services transferred to City Culture Peterborough (under City College Peterborough which is a function of the council), while sports and leisure services are now run by Peterborough Ltd, a wholly owned company of the council.

This was a complex transition involving the future of different services, venues and staff, so to transfer all of our leisure and cultural services with minimal impact on customers in just over 100 days is a massive success.

You can rest assured that we will continue to work hard to keep you safe and to keep the city moving forward.