University challenge!

City council leader John Holdich is a canny operator. He’s spent the last few years not only running the city but successful herding cats in the form of his fellow Tory councillors.

Before he took the reins of leadership there was virtually a civil war amongst the local Tory tribes of North West Cambs and Peterborough.

After decades as a councillor he probably thought he had seen it all.

But even he must have taken in a sharp intake of breath when the Combined Authority’s finance director suggested some key projects could be at risk.

Cllr Holdich and his cats, you will recall, railroaded the city into joining up with our hoity toity neighbours in the south in the nattily titled Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.

In return for Peterborough’s hard fought for independence he said there would be pots of gold for our cash-strapped city.

And crucially we were promised (or bribed with) the long awaited university.

There have been swift denials from Cllr Holdich and others that the project is at risk. And now the CA’s finance director has departed.

He was the fifth since the authority was formed a mere 18 months ago.

But doubts persist, and they will do until the first mortar board is thrown into the air by a University of Peterborough graduate.

Cllr Holdich appears unfazed by the problems at the Combined Authority.

But if the university plans are kicked into the long grass (campus in the pampas!) Cllr Holdich will have his head in the lion’s mouth and face a bigger challenge than herding cats.