1. Speech for Councillor Lee 14 July
Good morning and a very warm welcome to all of you.
Welcome to the Great Northern Hotel and also to Peterborough itself.
It is great to see so many people here with an interest in the historic environment and
in our heritage. There are some excellent speakers coming up who will be putting the
spotlight on some of our city’s hidden treasures and the ongoing work to ensure our
heritage assets are preserved and celebrated.
I would like to thank to both the Heritage Lottery Fund and Vivacity for supporting
today’s conference and Opportunity Peterborough for hosting such a worthwhile
event.
The subject of today’s conference is about making heritage resilient. In Peterborough
we have some fantastic heritage assets and we need to work together to make sure
we are making the most of them and showing the rest of the UK, those buildings,
parks and green spaces that unlock the secrets of Peterborough’s rich and
interesting history.
As the Heritage Champion for Peterborough this is something very close to my heart.
Like other local authorities, Peterborough City Council owns many of the city’s
heritage assets including Peterborough Museum and the Victorian Central Park
which has won the prestigious Green Flag for the past eight years.
Some of these assets are now managed on our behalf by partner organisations
including Vivacity which manages the museum, the Key Theatre, our libraries, sports
centres and Flag Fen, one of the best preserved late Bronze Age monumental
structures in Britain. Our trees, parks and green open spaces are also managed by
Enterprise Peterborough.
But Peterborough City Council is still strongly committed to ensuring we maximise
our assets and that is why we successfully bid for £3 million to pay for the
redevelopment of our museum from the Heritage Lottery Fund which attracted
50,000 visitors last year.
We also are investing £100,000 a year over the next three years to Flag Fen.
We are also providing grants to restore other historic buildings such as the
partnership scheme with English Heritage in the city centre, and as a local planning
authority play a key role in ensuring our buildings of the future complement those
from the past.
As Heritage Champion I am passionate about ensuring that protecting our heritage
and ensuring it is considered in our policy and strategy-making.
I chair the Heritage Steering Group, which brings together the heritage interests of
Peterborough, from the local Civic Society to English Heritage, and currently
comprises of about 10 different organisations.
Peterborough is often perceived as a new town, but it has a rich and varied heritage
comprising of over 1000 listed buildings, 64 scheduled monuments and 29
conservation areas, including the city centre itself. Recently the city council worked
alongside parish councils and the civic society to put together a draft local list of over

2. 230 buildings, including the one we are standing in now. This innovative and
community led approach will be highlighted in an English heritage case study later
this year.
The historic environment is vitally important to Peterborough. It underpins local
employment and attracts inward investment into the city. A recent study has
highlighted that the value of the heritage attractions group to the city in 2010 was
over 27 million pounds. This is something we can enhance with new approaches to
tourism and new projects, including the Cathedral’s ‘Peterborough 900’ project,
launched just a few weeks ago.
This innovative project aims to ensure the cathedral remains at the heart of city life
by creating a Music Education Centre for the community as well as the Cathedral,
upgrading facilities for visitors and pilgrims and establishing ‘drop-in’ facilities for
those in need including the homeless, and ex-service personnel (in partnership with
Combat Stress).
Peterborough’s heritage is a cornerstone for regeneration projects, with the
demolition of Norwich Union House, often referred to as the Corn Exchange Building.
This has enabled St Johns Church now to be appreciated in its fully glory and the
creation of the new green open space in the city centre - St Johns Square as part of
the city centre regeneration.
If you join us later for the evening reception, and I do hope you will do so, you will be
able to see inside St Johns, a Grade 1 listed church dating back at 1407.
2011 is an historic year for the Museum as it undergoes a 12-month redevelopment
that has been funded by Vivacity, Peterborough City Council and the Heritage Lottery
Fund. On Christmas Eve 2010 museum staff waved off their final visitors until early
2012 when the redevelopment project is due to be complete. However, although the
building will be closed, the museum service will continue throughout the year, as staff
take the museum out on tour to venues across the city.
Peterborough Museum is one of the city’s most popular attractions, along with the
Cathedral, Nene Valley Railway and Sacrewell Farm – each of which get over 60,000
visitors per year.
Peterborough Museum is in one of the city’s most historic buildings, which dates
back to the Georgian era, and on the site of an earlier Tudor property.
Vivacity has also recently taken on the management of Flag Fen Bronze Age site,
and we will be working hard to maximise its true potential attracting visitors from far
and wide to a world class site.
Peterborough city centre is predominantly of Victorian and Georgian stock with some
older timber framed buildings, and of course the Cathedral. The Cathedral and its
precincts are a source of pride and an important part of the local identity of the city.
Its iconic image is regular used as a symbol for the city in organisation logos and
branding including the recently launched partnership with Enterprise Peterborough,
which now carries out the city’s waste collection services and manages our parks
and green spaces on behalf of the council.

3. The cathedral and the newly revamped Cathedral Square featured prominently in a
marketing campaign in London to attract investment into Peterborough.
The historic environment is great for providing skills, training and educational
opportunities within the city.
Local initiatives, to work with young people who were not in education, employment
and training, to teach them traditional skills proved a great success.
Young people were taught dry stone walling and hedge-laying to name just a few of
the traditional skills that are still required to maintain some of the rural areas of the
city.
Schools regularly take visits out to the heritage sites where they can try out all sorts
of hands-on experiences. They can take a peek inside a Bronze Age or Iron Age
Roundhouse or learn where their food comes from.
To get local people interested in their heritage we have the annual Heritage Festival,
which took place a few weeks ago.
Over 20,000 people attending a wide variety of events, from eminent historian and
BBC broadcaster Dr David Starkey to falconry displays.
Heritage Open Days, coming up in September are supported by the city council and
the Civic Society and Vivacity, and provide a brilliant opportunity for people to see the
sites for free, including this year, the 14th century Longthorpe Tower, one of Britain’s
top 100 buildings, according to a new book.
The replacement body for the Civic Trust, Civic Voice, held their first annual meeting
in this venue last year, and they helped to showcase the high levels of interest in the
historic environment from groups across the country.
Delegates then enjoyed their day in Peterborough, as I hope you shall.
Thank you!