John Holdich, City Council Leader: ‘I think I have the reputation across the city for being a listener, and fair…’

When Peterborough City Council leader Marco Cereste lost his seat in the May elections, his deputy, John Holdich – Councillor for Glinton and Wittering – was the natural choice to succeed, and was elected unopposed. The city’s second-longest serving councillor, he first took up a seat in 1977 and was elected to Peterborough City Council in 1979. During his time, he has held most of the senior positions but majored on housing and social services, and is currently the cabinet member for Education, Skills and University as well as Communications. He also served as Mayor in 1995/6, and was awarded the OBE for public service in 1996. Toby Venables spoke with him about the role of the leader, the future of the city, and a little bit of history... 

FIRST OF ALL, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE THE LEADER OF THE COUNCIL?
My role as leader is a bit different at the moment, because this Council has 26 Conservatives, and 30 others. So, it’s what they call a “rainbow Council”: 12 Labour, four Lib Dems, four Ukip, four Liberals and so on. Nobody stood against me because I think they believed that I do work well with others, and can hopefully weld the Council together to take the city forward and make it even more exciting than it already is.

HOW MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE DOES THE PERSONALITY OF THE LEADER MAKE?
Well, you need the support of businesses in Peterborough, and you need the support of the people, and I believe I’ve got that. I think I have the reputation across the city for being a listener, and fair. I was at a business event the other day and everybody wanted to talk to me. That’s a good start, the fact that they want to. My door is open, and I’ll listen to anybody if it benefits the city.

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE IS DIFFERENT FROM MARCO CERESTE’S?
I think different leaders come in at the right time. Marco was in at the right time, because it needed a more entrepreneurial approach. I have done most jobs across this Council so have a good idea how the machine works – an overall view that Marco perhaps didn’t have. But sometimes you need that to make those ideas happen. It’s just a shame Marco isn’t here to see the results of his work, such as the new Queensgate, because he worked for a long time to achieve it. Marco was a man of ideas. But I believe I’m the right man at this point to take the city forward.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU BRING TO THE ROLE?
There’s been a Holdich on the Council since 1880, and Holdich Street was named after my great-great-grandfather in 1886. I have done most jobs on the Council – County Council, City Council and Parish Council – so I have a pretty good view of Peterborough. Marco in his time transformed the way the city works; I want to take up that mantle and make sure it’s a nice, clean, fair place to live with good quality jobs. That’s not just words – I think I can show that from my role in the City Council in the last five years, in education, where we completely modernised and extended our schools. So, the quality of education in Peterborough is going in the right direction, despite the challenges of migration and one of the highest birth rates in the country. That’s now balancing out. Two years ago, the in-year admissions to schools were 91% migrant, whereas now they are now only 60% migrant, and that also reflects the fact that we are attracting firms who are bringing people to work in Peterborough.

That’s good for the city and the skills we have here. We have several new schools in the pipeline, and the skills opportunities in Peterborough are great, but I need to create an education menu for Peterborough. We’ve got extended schools now, so kids can stay there until they’re 18, but we need to find alternatives for those who are not engaged in education in schools. Something like 37 organisations in the city run apprenticeships, but we’ve got to get them around the table and co-ordinate to make sure it’s right for Peterborough. We’ve also got a UTC (University Technical College) opening in September, and we’ve just opened the Business Centre down the road. The Business Centre was planned seven years ago, when there weren’t extended schools and wasn’t a UTC, so we’ve had to really look at what Peterborough needs across the city to promote business and help it to be sustainable. I think we’ve got a great vision for the city. We have produced more houses this year than at any time since the development corporation, with a good mix of affordable housing to buy or rent. We need to get that mix of housing right, we need to get the leisure offer right and we need to get the infrastructure right.

SO IT’S ABOUT ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS TOGETHER?
It’s about creating excitement about the city. You have to continually upgrade your city, otherwise you die. We need to keep it vibrant, and there are other future schemes that will help to keep it vibrant. We’re trying to change the nightlife of Peterborough, for example. One of my more enjoyable jobs was sitting on the licensing panel, when we had about 4,500 nightclub spaces in the city centre. We used to go around at 2am to make sure that things were safe, which was quite an eye-opener! But that whole scene has changed. Now, after 5pm you could drive a bus through the square… That’s beginning to change with the restaurants coming in, and if the cinema plans come together we’ll then bring more people into the centre. One of my ambitions is to get the Broadway theatre reopened. I went there when the Bill Kenwright shows were put on, and the whole area just lit up. People came in droves, and those people often want to eat out before or after the show, so the effect of that spreads across the city. We can only try and facilitate that, but having someone here of Bill Kenwright’s reputation really helps. I decided to go to every show, because if we want those kinds of shows here, we’ve got to support them – and I’m absolutely certain the people of Peterborough will support it. But you have to do it in conjunction with the Cresset and the Key, because you don’t want one to open and another to close. It needs to be a place we can all live.

WHAT ABOUT THE YOUNGER POPULATION?
One of the jobs I had as the representative for education was to try and increase the kids going to uni here, because that has an impact on nightlife, as well as keeping skills here. Believe it or not, we’ve now got around 3,000 people studying around the city – in the University Centre, and at Guild House [part of Anglia Ruskin University]. Some are overseas students studying business, and we have about 500 nurses studying here as well. I went out to the pubs to talk about holding student nights and they didn’t see the point. Only one took the idea up – but when they did, one Tuesday night, they filled the place. Part of my job is to facilitate this, bringing more people into the city centre at night. That’s about creating footfall, getting people moving around the city. Done right, that doesn’t cost much – it attracts money.

HOW IMPORTANT DO YOU BELIEVE A UNIVERSITY IS TO THE FUTURE OF THIS CITY?
I believe it’s very, very important. When I got the job, the Labour government had taken a billion pounds out of further education, then my lot came to power and started putting up tuition fees… But you need get a nucleus of students before you can apply to have a university, and we are getting to that stage. The number of students we need to have registered at University Centre Peterborough is about a thousand, and it’s currently around 700+, so we’re getting there. Then we can apply to be a university, and go through another process to be able to award our own degrees. That whole process will cost about £750,000.

SO WHAT IS THE NEXT STEP?
If we do get up to a thousand and go for university status, we will need to build another campus in the city. We also need to provide student housing, and that’s the bit I’m trying to get funded at the moment. Within the next three years, I need to create around 250 bed spaces. Historically, Peterborough has not had landlords that provided that kind of accommodation. So, we need to build halls of residence – and I think we’ve got to do it before we actually get the university. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but you can’t attract students here to shiny new facilities if there’s nowhere for them to live. I believe there will be an entrepreneur around here who will pick this up, because it’s not a gamble. Once you have a university here, it will also attract others. One of Marco’s ideas was to get people living back in the city centre, and in fact, my first election to the city was the city centre, when everyone lived above the pubs and shops. They moved out over the years, but now there are around 350 planning applications in and around the city centre to convert office space back into accommodation, and I’ve looked into some of those to see if we could take them over.

HOW MANY PEOPLE IN TOTAL COULD BE BROUGHT BACK TO THE CITY CENTRE?
If you also factor in South Bank, we reckon around 4,000 people. Research has shown that waterside developments in other cities are incredibly successful, and we hope to have a planning application in place soon for Fletton Quays. That will also involve a new bridge, so it’s a very exciting project. Sometimes it’s frustrating, because we announce that things are going to happen, but by the time you’ve done due diligence, planning applications and so on, three, four, five years have passed before you put a brick down. But we’ve got to do it right. South Bank has been on the cards for a long time, but now things are really happening with it, and you should see the planning application in place by the end of the year.

NATIONALLY, THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE BEEN DOMINATED BY CUTS AND AUSTERITY, BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT’S NECESSARY TO SPEND IN ORDER TO SECURE A FUTURE?
Absolutely. If the businessman kept his money in his pocket we’d never go anywhere, and the Council’s got to do the same, within the restrictions that we have, of which there are quite a few. We are very accountable – but we have to get out there and do it, and be more accountable to the people.

DO YOU FEEL PEOPLE ARE GETTING INVOLVED?
People are getting involved. We had a conference the other day that had 150 people at it. Ten years ago you’d have been lucky to have 20. And people are making a difference. We recently gave money to Family Voice to review special educational needs, and now it’s being held up as one of the best reviews in the country and people are wanting to come to talk to Peterborough about it. If I want to achieve one thing, it’s that – to get people involved and feeling they really are making a difference. And for that, they need to see the result. It takes a long while to alter a culture, but if I could do that and have it written on my gravestone, I’d be happy! I was born here and I’m very proud of my city, and it’s a great privilege to take that city forward.