Council leaders Peterborough First to stand just four new candidates at local elections

Peterborough First will stand just four new candidates in May’s local elections.

The party, which took over Peterborough City Council (PCC) in November, is defending four seats and hoping to gain a further four.

Mark Ormston is running in Eye, Thorney and Newborough, while Roger Antunes is running in Hampton Vale; both for seats currently held by Conservatives.

Sarah Hillier is running in Werrington, hoping to replace former Peterborough First member Stephen Lane who resigned from the council mid-term for personal reasons.

Neil Boyce, meanwhile, will be running for the seat currently held by Peterborough First member Cllr Saqib Farooq in Glinton and Castor, while Cllr Farooq himself will run for a seat in Hargate and Hempsted – also currently held by a Conservative.

The group won’t, then, be put in the position of running against the currently-elected Labour, Liberal Democrat and Greens councillors who supported their successful vote of no confidence in the previous Conservative administration in November.

But they do still face a gender imbalance: only one of the group of 10 current Peterborough First councillors is a woman (Cllr Judy Fox in Werrington), while only one of their new candidates is female.

Council leader Cllr Mohammed Farooq, a Peterborough First councillor in Hargate and Hempsted, said the party “hasn’t really campaigned hard to put candidates in seats”.

“The major parties are struggling,” he said, when asked about the gender imbalance. “But we had an additional issue in that we formed our organisation quite late on in the day.

“Once we took over the council, we had two duties: get the council into the right place and try to consolidate our own position as a party, but that really was a secondary factor.”

Peterborough First may have only had around five months leading the council so far, but they’ve had all the power and publicity which comes alongside that.

But Cllr Farooq said in response to this that the group “always put party politics behind the main work”.

“We never concentrated on this,” he said. “If we really looked into it, we probably would have been able to put more candidates in.”

The elections will be held on 2nd May.