Fen Tigers: Why Cambridgeshire mayor is funding Fenland's 'Awesome Foursome'

Special article on why Fenland’s market towns are so important by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayor James Palmer.

So far, it’s been a year where good news has been hard to come by writes Cambridgeshire Mayor James Palmer.

But I couldn’t be more delighted to announce that four Fenland communities will soon have a share of the £13 million pot the Combined Authority is cracking open for Cambridgeshire’s market towns.

Chatteris, March, Whittlesey and Wisbech can now bid for money to help realise projects in their masterplans. These towns have a fascinating past and what I hope will be a massive future, as flourishing social and shopping hubs, visitor destinations, and entrepreneurial hotspots. And if our efforts pay off, that future will have a restored Wisbech rail service at its very heart.

But more of that later.

It’s no secret that development of Fenland market towns, backed by improvements on roads like the A10 and A47, and better rail and bus services, has been a top Combined Authority priority from the day I was elected Mayor. I, for one, am sick of hearing about lack of investment in England’s ‘North’ when so many left-behind towns in Cambridgeshire, not least here in the Fens, have been scandalously deprived over many decades.

A third of the Combined Authority population lives in market towns, with nearly as many again living in surrounding areas. In fact, more people live in the market towns than in Peterborough or Cambridge - but investment often favours the cities at the heart of our region while neglecting the market towns that form its very backbone.

Added to chronic under-funding, these communities face declining high streets, an ageing population, reliance on cars, and such a loss of in- town jobs that many people have to commute miles for work. And now there is Covid-19 to pile on the pressure.

So, in response to the virus, we’ve doubled the fund we’d originally allocated to eleven market towns in the ‘fen economy’ - across Huntingdonshire, and East Cambridgeshire, as well as in Fenland itself.

That extra money will help the towns manage the impact of Covid on everyday life – addressing the predicted rise in home working and fall in use of public transport, creating new cycleways and footpaths, and adapting to the changed use of community and commercial space.

So now there’s £13.1 million on offer.

The Fenland Four will pitch for money to help implement the blueprint for their future that is the masterplan that each town developed with Combined Authority support.

Where proposals are accepted, we’ll give out the cash quickly, because need is urgent, and everyone wants to get the money working. The Combined Authority investment is also bread-on-the-water, designed to attract other funders, whether Government, the private sector, or grant- giving environment and heritage bodies.

My mission is to double Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s economic output over the next twenty years.

But that inclusive growth won’t happen unless our market towns can be helped to supercharge their own micro economies.

Which brings me back to Wisbech, ‘Capital of the Fens’. It’s one of the largest towns in the UK without a rail link and I am incredibly pleased to say that this week brought us a step closer to restoring the service closed over half a century ago.

The independent study commissioned by the Combined Authority concludes that reinstating the rail link between Wisbech and Cambridge, with a new town centre station for Wisbech, and a two-trains-per hour service running to and from Cambridge, is both commercially viable and would be “transformative” for the town’s future.

These findings couldn’t be more welcome and will form the basis of the business case the Combined Authority team will take to Westminster next month in their bid for funding.

We all know that reopening this line would be a huge boost, worth tens of millions of pounds to the Wisbech economy, bringing in tourists, attracting new businesses, new skills, and new consumers, boosting property prices, and helping the Combined Authority in its work to level up access to opportunities across our whole region.

The Fenland teams will already be hard at work on their bids and I’m looking forward to seeing the proposals to revitalise these historic towns and shape their own future.

My vision for Fenland, and for the whole of Cambridgeshire, is as a place where the market towns, with their rural surroundings, advance alongside the cities, linked into opportunity, and no-one is left behind.