Tag: John Holdich

Council elects old school Tory Leader

07:19 Thursday 21st May 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: John Holdich is the Leader, the new Leader, of Peterborough City Council. The long-serving Conservative councillor for Glinton and Wittering has been appointed unopposed. He’ll replace Marco Cereste who lost his Stanground seat in the recent local elections. Our political reporter Hannah Olsson was at Peterborough Town Hall for last night’s meeting.
(TAPE)
HANNAH OLSSON: The General Election may have surprised pollsters and parties alike, but this evening in Peterborough Town Hall everything went as predicted. Conservative John Peach is the new Mayor, and Conservative John Holdich is the new Leader of Peterborough City Council. We were expecting a nomination from the Labour Group, but it didn’t come, so John Holdich was elected unopposed. The councillors nominating him described him as Peterborough through and through, a team player qualified and respected pair of hands. He said it was time for a clean slate, and he would do his best to represent the people of Peterborough. The only drama of the evening came as the new Leader began announcing the Cabinet members. Two members of the Labour Party Ed Murphy and Jo Johnson walked out of the Council chamber. Ed Murphy at one point was asking for nomination to run a cross-party Cabinet. I asked both Ed and Jo why they left the chamber.
JO JOHNSON: The Labour Group and followers of the Labour Group whip, because we were going to put a position up, and we didn’t do it.
HANNAH OLSSON: That came as a surprise to you?
JO JOHNSON: Yes it did. We weren’t told. We had a pre-meeting before and we weren’t told that there was no opposition.
HANNAH OLSSON: The Leader of the Labour Party Mohammed Jamil told me that simply, things had changed.
MOHAMMED JAMIL: The support I’d been promised, or I thought I had the support, prior to this meeting certain group members came to me and said look I’m sorry we’re not supporting you. Now I felt I could go ahead with this, or I could try and work with John Holdich to secure a better deal.
HANNAH OLSSON: So it may be a new era for Peterborough City Council, but it seems the drama continues.
(LIVE)
DOTTY MCLEOD: Hannah Olsson there reporting from the annual Council meeting in Peterborough last night. John Holdich the new Leader of Peterborough City Council joins me now. Morning John.
JOHN HOLDICH: Good morning Dotty.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Well congratulations. What is first on your list of to do tasks?
Continue reading “Council elects old school Tory Leader”

One week on – the parties find their feet

17:39 Friday 15th May 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: They say a week is a long time in politics. Since the election results were announced last Friday we’ve had twists and turns, ups and downs, from all of the political parties. And our political reporter Hannah Olsson has been trying to keep up. She joins me in the studio now. It’s been quite a week, and today, well, the drama of the Labour leadership contest took another strange turn.
HANNAH OLSSON: It certainly did. Now since Ed Miliband announced he was resigning as Labour Party Leader after to his party’s disappointing defeat in the General Election last week, contenders have been throwing their hats in the ring. We’ve had Chuka Umunna, Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Mary Creagh, all saying they wanted to enter the race. But then today Chuka Umunna surprised us all by announcing he was withdrawing. The reason he gave in a statement was that he wasn’t comfortable with the level of pressure and scrutiny that came with being a Leadership candidate. Now Chuka Umunna is a polished media performer, and was seen as a real contender for the job, so the announcement will come as a big shock for many people within the Labour Party. But former labour Leader Lord Kinnock says he has probably done the right thing.
(TAPE)
LORD KINNOCK: If he felt in his soul that he wasn’t prepared to subject himself, and more importantly his family, to the kind of attention which is fairly typical sadly these days, he has done absolutely the right thing. There’s no point at all in inflicting avoidable unnecessary misery on those that you love most.
(LIVE)
HANNAH OLSSON: Candidates must secure nominations from 34 colleagues, that’s roughly 15% of the Labour party’s MPs, by 15th June, to make it onto those ballot papers. So we may see more twists and turns in the race before then.
CHRIS MANN: Let’s move on to talk about UKIP. Yesterday I spoke to Patrick O’Flynn, who had very publicly criticised the party’s Leader Nigel Farage, calling him ‘thin skinned and aggressive’. Has there been more reaction to that?
Continue reading “One week on – the parties find their feet”

Council budget proposals make grim reading

07:41 Monday 17th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: Conservative councillors in Peterborough have announced how they plan to balance the city’s budget for next year. It makes pretty grim reading. Peterborough City Council face the challenge of bridging a £25 million shortfall in funds, created by reductions in central government funding. The main headlines from the budget proposals include a £7 million reduction from the adult social care budget, a minimum 10% rise in parking charges for city centre council-run car parks, the introduction of a parking charge for blue badge holders, more than £500,000 to be cut from the budget for Amey who run bin collections and street cleaning. And 30 members of staff will compulsorily be made redundant. And this is just the first wave of cuts. There will be more proposals in the new year. Some Opposition councillors have described them as ‘an attack on the city’s most vulnerable‘. Others have hit out at the Coalition Government for not giving the city enough funding. Joining us now is councillor John Holdich. Morning John.
JOHN HOLDICH: Good morning.
CHRIS MANN: The Deputy Leader of Peterborough City Council of course. A leading member of the Cabinet that put this together. You’ve been in the council for 37 years. Is that right?
JOHN HOLDICH: I have indeed Chris. Yes.
CHRIS MANN: Known anything tougher than this?
JOHN HOLDICH: Never, and it really wasn’t what I was elected to do.
CHRIS MANN: So where (how) did you decide where to put the red pen then?
JOHN HOLDICH: Well it is extremely difficult particularly this year. 14% of our Government funding has been cut,, which is equivalent to £44 million over five years. The next financial year as you’ve reported it’s £12.3 million, but we do have pressures of another £12 million because of the extra people coming into the service. And we do need to make £25 million worth of reductions to be able to balance our books.
CHRIS MANN: Some people will have noticed the correlation. You’re a Conservative. The Government is a Conservative-led coalition. Shouldn’t you be telling the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that they need to stop these cuts, and it’s really affecting people in your area?
JOHN HOLDICH: Well I think we’re always making representations across all the services, and one shouldn’t underestimate the task we’ve got here. For some councillors to attack it, this is the first tranche …
CHRIS MANN: Can you just answer that question again. The Government are the ones who are causing this, according to you, because you’ve had your central funding cut. It’s a Conservative government. Are you going to speak out against them?
Continue reading “Council budget proposals make grim reading”

Stewart Jackson – a Message to Marco Cereste

07:20 Thursday 29th May 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[C]HRIS MANN: Arrogant aggressive and bombastic. Words used by the Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson to describe the Leader of the Council there Marco Cereste. It follows an interview councillor Cereste did on the Bigger Breakfast Show yesterday with me where he insisted he would stay as Leader, despite the fact his party lost overall control in last week’s local election. I asked him whether the results meant he should question his position as Leader.
(TAPE)
MARCO CERESTE: No. Absolutely not. What it is is a message that we’ve got to understand, and we as a Conservative Group understand it very very well. Because we are the only party in the country that is offering a referendum on Europe. We understand the message very well. We respect the voters’ views. And we will be working .. we will be working to make sure that we listen ..
CHRIS MANN: We’re talking about Peterborough City Council, not what’s happening in Europe, and the fact that you’ve lost overall control.
MARCO CERESTE: No. No. I disagree. No. No. No.
CHRIS MANN: Is that not a vote about you Marco?
MARCO CERESTE: Listen. Listen. If you want me to continue speaking to you, then you must let me speak. If you want to listen to yourself, you don’t need me on the other end of the telephone.
CHRIS MANN: Do you not agree that this vote was about matters to do with Peterborough City Council?
MARCO CERESTE: What I’m saying to you is that whilst the vote elected local authority councillors, throughout the entire country the same thing repeated itself. So it’s a national issue. That doesn’t mean that we locally don’t need to listen to the voters, because we absolutely do need to listen to the voters. And we as a party will listen to the voters.
CHRIS MANN: So how will you be doing that? What are you going to change?
MARCO CERESTE: Well what we will do is we will continue to do what is necessary for Peterborough, and that is to deliver good services efficiently, effectively, keep the council taxes low .. as low as we possibly can, and work within our budget, which is what we’ve been doing all along. And if you look at the record of our Conservative administration, it is phenomenal. We are outperforming most of the cities in the entire country.
(LIVE)
CHRIS MANN: So that’s what Marco Cereste had to say live on this programme yesterday morning to me. Listening to that was Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson, a fellow Conservative of course, and he joins me now. Morning Stewart.
STEWART JACKSON: Good morning Chris.
CHRIS MANN: What did you think of Marco Cereste’s attitude to what happened at the polls?
Continue reading “Stewart Jackson – a Message to Marco Cereste”

Boundary Commission on Peterborough Council

07:07 Wednesday 16th April 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[D]OTTY MCLEOD BBC: Our population is growing and therefore we need more councillors to represent us. Or do we? Advice by the Boundary Commission to Peterborough City Council suggests they need at least another three.

07:14
MARCUS BOWELL BOUNDARY COMMISSION: One of the most important things we do in an electoral review is we talk to the council at an early stage about what their expectations are, how they want to run their authority. And the Council came to us and proposed the small increase in councillors.

08:13
PCC CLLR HOLDICH: I’ve got some sympathy for having less councillors. If it was my business of course I wouldn’t want 57 or 61 directors of that company. But that’s not our decision. Our decision from Government is purely and simply that we need so many councillors per so many electorate. And in this proposal, and we did ask them, Charles Swift put it to them that we needed less councillors. But the Boundary Commission insisted you needed so many councillors per electorate.

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MP Jackson Wins Extra Cash for Peterborough Schools

17:12 Monday 16th January 2012
Drive BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: As you’ve just heard in the news, it looks like schools in Peterborough will be given money to help with the growing number of pupils who don’t have English as the first language. The city and its surrounding areas has become a mecca for many Pakistani families, and a growing number of Eastern European families, looking to settle down. It’s made the city one of the most multi-cultural in East Anglia, but has led to pressures in the classroom, with many teachers unavailable to offer extra help to children. So, how badly is this money required? Well joining me now is John Holdich, the Cabinet Member for Schools at Peterborough City Council. John, good evening to you.
JOHN HOLDICH: Good evening.
CHRIS MANN: So this is something you’ve been asking for for a while. Continue reading “MP Jackson Wins Extra Cash for Peterborough Schools”

School Places and Broken Promises

08:13 Tuesday 10th May 2011
Peterborough Breakfast Show
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

PAUL STAINTON: 14% of parents didn’t get their first choice primary school for their child in Peterborough. 95% of Peterborough schoolchildren will be going though to one of their 3 preferred primary schools, from September 2011. Earlier we spoke to Cabinet Member for Education Councillor John Holdich. He admitted to us there was a shortage of school places in Peterborough. Well the new councillor for Ravensthorpe Ed Murphy has been in touch. He says a lack of school places is a big problem in his ward, and the West ward. Ed Murphy is on the line now. Morning Ed.
ED MURPHY: Good morning Paul.
PAUL STAINTON: When you say a big problem, can you quantify that for us? Continue reading “School Places and Broken Promises”