Ensuring city’s future prosperity

This week we made an announcement that will ensure the future prosperity of our city and create lasting benefits for our residents, our businesses and our city as a whole for many years to come.

Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) has been chosen as the official higher education partner for a new employment-focused university in Peterborough being led by the city council and the Cambs and Peterborough Combined Authority.

ARU will deliver the curriculum for the new university, which will be known as ARU Peterborough, until 2028, and will soon begin recruiting its first students.

The new £30 million university is set to open its doors to 2,000 students in 2022, with an ambition to offer courses for up to 12,500 by 2030. The curriculum will be designed to meet local economic needs; providing both opportunities for local residents to receive a top-class vocational education and a well skilled local workforce for businesses to employ.

Establishing a university for Peterborough will bring immeasurable benefits for people in our city and across the wider region.

Our residents will be helped into well-paid, more sustainable jobs fit for the rapidly evolving skills and knowledge requirements of the 21st Century workplace.

The curriculum will be matched to the growth needs of local businesses, providing new opportunities for communities to gain access to higher level skills, better paid employment and enhanced life-chances.

Crucially, it will stop our talented young people from leaving the city to learn and set up life elsewhere, as well as helping Peterborough attract new talent, some of whom we hope will choose to put down roots in our wonderful city, raise families and start and grow businesses.

For our businesses it will ensure a good crop of people to choose from when advertising for jobs – people who have the training and the skills that they need to thrive in their workplace. Both hard skills in key sectors of our economy such as digital technology, low carbon tech and healthcare and medical technology and soft skills such as teamwork, communications, problem solving, inter-personal skills and personal resilience.

Better skilled and qualified employees will in turn help our businesses to thrive and prosper.

And for our city as a whole, the presence of the university will make Peterborough a more desirable place to start a family, to set up home or to do business – which will provide an ongoing boost to our economy.

In ARU we have found the best, most progressive and innovative academic partner to ensure we have a university that opens on time and thrives.

I look forward, not only to the commencement of construction work later this year, but to the day in autumn 2022 when we will be able to welcome our first intake of students to Peterborough.

The rules around what we can and cannot do are changing frequently as the course of the virus changes.

So it is really important there is good awareness amongst residents of the current rules around socialising and the need to socially distance.

We have been working directly with our communities and sharing messages on social media – please do what you can to share them with your friends and family.

Remember, only people from one other household can meet with you inside your home. When you’re outside any number of people can meet from two households, or up to six people from different households. And at all times, you must remain 2m apart from anyone you do not live with, and where this is not possible, at least 1m apart and take precautions such as wearing a face covering or not speaking face to face.

If we are to see a reduction in the community transmission rate in Peterborough and avoid a second lockdown, we must all heed this advice.

In addition, we’ve increased our testing capacity temporarily. A mobile testing facility is at Gladstone Park Community Centre until at least Sunday, 10am to 3pm each day.

This extra testing does mean that our number of confirmed cases will increase in the coming days and weeks, but it is better to know that people have the virus so that we can then work with them to reduce its spread.

So please, if you have symptoms of coronavirus – a fever, new continuous cough or a loss or change in sense of taste or smell, please book a test at www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-COVID-19-19 or by calling 119.

You can rest assured the council will continue to work hard to keep services going, its residents safe and well and to keep the city moving.