https://www.highsheriffcambs.org.uk/

High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, Peterborough (2026)

16/06/2026

OUR PROBATION SERVICE : BRILLIANT BUT UNDER-THE-RADAR
I worry that most of us in Cambridgeshire don’t appreciate how much work our Probation Service does on our behalf. I suggested that to a staff member today and he agreed: “we’re under the radar”. Note that this post has no tags, as the Probation Service seems invisible on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook (unless I’ve searched badly).

There are about 180 Probation Staff in Cambridgeshire and, at any one time, about 1,500 people on probation. There are offices in Peterborough, Huntington, Cambridge and Wisbech where, every day, a total of about 250 people on probation come in to talk with their “Practitioner” and where all the casework and admin is managed. It’s part of H.M. Prison & Probation Service, itself part of the Ministry of Justice.

I was there to present 10 and 20 year long service awards, and all the staff I met were energetic, enthused, dedicated, committed… and with a lot of smiles, fun and laughter. It was clear they all enjoy their jobs, despite the sometimes very tough nature of it.

Some research offenders’ backgrounds and present Pre-sentence Reports to Magistrates and Judges in Court, to help them decide what sort of Court Order to give. Others are “Practitioners” as described above, case managers of persons on probation. I met two lovely ladies who manage the specially-designed secure rooms for those meetings – a complex task as there are so many people coming in every day. Others work with people out of prison on licence to help them with housing, education and jobs. Finally, I had a very interesting conversation with the two people who run the Community Payback Service and find unpaid community work for about 100 offenders at any one time whose Court Orders might specify 40-300 hours of such work.

There’s so much to our Probation Service, expertly led by Sarah Port (who herself got a 20-year long service award – many congratulations). I think we need to learn more about it, so we can better appreciate the team’s work. But in the meantime: a huge thank-you to all our 180 Probation Staff, and in particular to those who’ve served our community for 10 and 20 years.

16/06/2026

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE, BE EXCEPTIONAL!
That’s Peterborough College’s inspiring and challenging message to its students.

Set on a large 30-acre campus close to the city centre, Peterborough College is a Further and Higher Education College, also delivering specialist commercial training for local employers. Together with nearby Stamford College, it’s part of Inspire Education Group (IEG), with 12,000 students and 1,300 staff. About 6,000 students are aged 16-18 doing A or T levels. There are also 800 apprentices, 600 Degree and Higher Education students, 4,000 adult learners. These numbers are huge, and the breath of courses is wide: this is a big operation, making a vital contribution to educating Peterborough’s young and getting them job-ready.

I was hosted by CEO Rachel Nicholls, Chief Learning Officer Sarah Young, COO Edward Thomas, CFO Alex Owen, Group Head of Curriculum Paul Wadsworth, and VP Curriculum+Quality David O’Garr. At times we had to tip-toe around and whisper, as it was exam day for lots of the students!

Peterborough College isn’t resting on its laurels, but has an ambitious 10-year growth Masterplan, looking to build eight new phases of state-of-the-art classrooms and facilities to improve its education offering. The first of these, already completed, is its hugely-impressive Centre for Green Technology, partly paid-for by Peterborough City Council and the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority.

In the Centre, students and apprentices will be trained for careers in “green” sectors. We saw different types of heat pumps that the students were learning to install, plumb-in and fit the electrics. We saw a fake house roof that the students were learning to fit with solar panels. We saw EV charging points that the students were learning to install into garages and carports. We saw a car workshop where the students were learning how to service EVs. All highly impressive.

Peterborough College is definitely bold, brave and exceptional. Thank you to all its staff, and best of luck to all its students!

14/06/2026

BIG MEET / BIG GREET / BIG LUNCH / BIG, BEATING HEART
Many people have already called Ranji Reddy a “Peterborough Hero” for all the community and charity work that she does. Today it’s my turn to be super-grateful to her, as she very kindly organised a large and lovely lunch for me to meet, greet and be greeted by over 50 Peterborough community leaders and champions.

I confess that my own usual idea of a Sunday lunch is roast chicken, roast potatoes and lots of veg, so it was very good for me - with my wife Jo - to change gear and enjoy a delicious South Asian “Thali” lunch at the Lotus Restaurant in Westgate.

Present were, in no particular order, representatives from:

Peterborough Hospital
Peterborough Cathedral
Peterborough City Council (Councillors and Senior Leaders)
Cambridge Children's Hospital Peterborough
Peterborough Council for Voluntary Services
Peterborough Pride in Place Programme
Ecumenical Christian community
Gujarati Hindu community
Telugu Indian community
Sri Lankan community
Lithuanian community
Nepalese community
East Timor community
Samoan community
Chinese community
GLADCA Community Association
PARCA Community Association
Cambridge Children’s Hospital, via Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust - help make your hospitals even better

What a wide and super gathering, everyone chatting, laughing, gossiping and enjoying themselves over the delicious food.

In fact, Peterborough is so welcoming that we’d already met lots of the guests, so it was really a case of re-meet for the second or third time, rather than meet for the first time.

The old Soke of Peterborough had the Latin motto “Cor Unum” - which means “one heart”. Looking round the room at lunch today, with so many different groups coming together, it was quite clear to me that today’s Peterborough still has one, united, strong, proud, loving and powerfully-beating heart.

14/06/2026

FREE LEGAL ADVICE? WHERE’S THE CATCH? THERE’S NONE AT THE ARU LAW CLINIC
Anglia Ruskin University runs “Law Clinics” from its Cambridge and Peterborough campuses, which benefit everyone:
1. Members of the public can get free legal advice on family, personal injury, medical negligence, employment and immigration law matters. That’s all part of ARU’s commitment to the community
2. The client’s initial discussion is held with a student in ARU’s Law Faculty, who then prepares a draft “advice note”. That helps the students gain real-world experience as part of their law course.
3. The student then discusses their draft advice note with a practising barrister/solicitor drawn from a 300-strong panel maintained by the Law Clinic. These lawyers do this free as part of their own generous ‘pro bono’ work.
4. The Advice Note is signed by the practicing lawyer (so the client knows it’s quality advice) and, finally, the student explains it to the client.

It’s a brilliant, award-winning public service masterminded by Caroline Allison,
Senior Lecturer at ARU and Associate Director of the Law Clinic.

But that’s not all. Each year the students organise a Legal Walk to raise money for the The Access to Justice Foundation, a major national charity which itself offers free legal advice and gives grants to people can pay for lawyers. The slight summer drizzle didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits, and the students walked alongside lawyers from lots of local law firms, before returning to ARU to gorge on pizzas.

Three cheers…

The first to Callie Allison for all her work running the ARU Law Clinic.

The second to all the ARU Law Students for working at the Law Clinic…. and for organising the annual Legal Walk.

The third to all the practicing lawyers who finalise the legal advice, walk the walk, and share the pizzas!

13/06/2026

VALIANTLY ADDRESSING ONE OF THE UK’s TWO 21st CENTURY CURSES

There are about 50 Womens Resources Centres around the UK. Each is independent and separately-run, though they all share the same aims and ethos. The Cambridge Women's Resources Centre is between East Road and Mill Road in Cambridge, run by CEO Harriet Morgan and her fabulous team.

WRCs are safe, female-only community spaces (letting me in was a rare exception). They provide an incredibly important range of services to vulnerable women - particularly those who’ve had to flee from domestic abuse or are in poverty or isolation – via a combination of practical advice, educational courses and one-to-one counselling.

It’s terrible. I’ve only been High Sheriff for 10 weeks and yet one of the major themes that keeps on coming up is domestic violence, abuse and vulnerability, almost all of it affecting women, though everyone notes that men are also sufferers. Is this to be one of the two curses of 21st Century UK, alongside the crisis facing so many of our children? Why on earth is it happening? What’s happening to us?

Thankfully there are lots of charities and support groups like the Cambridge Womens Resources Centre, with amazingly-dedicated staff and volunteers working incredibly hard to help victims and sufferers.

Last year the CWRC helped 600 women. It’s core activity is a 12-week course for domestic abuse survivors called the “Freedom Programme”: this enables them to rebuild their lives by making sense of what’s happened to them, instead of the whole experience just feeling like a horrible mess and bottomless pit that they’ll never escape from.

It also helps women get housing, benefits, education and jobs; provides safe and welcoming spaces where women can connect and rebuild their confidence; and has a free shop supported by donations.

Very many thanks to Hellena Barnes for kindly arranging our visit, and to all of the team for the vital work that they do.

But why oh why is our society such that this problem exists in the first place? It’s an absolute tragedy.

11/06/2026

CHILDHOOD ACEs AND THE CAMBRIDGE ACORN PROJECT
Do you know what an ACE is? I didn’t till I visited the Cambridge Acorn Project, which also operates in Huntingdon, Northstowe and Soham.

An ACE is an “Adverse Childhood Experience”, typically caused by abuse (physical, emotional or sexual), neglect (physical or emotional) or household disfunction (parents with mental illness, substance abuse, in prison, or separated).

The toxic stress from ACEs alters a child’s brain development and increases their long-term risk of chronic illness, mental health disorders and socio-economic challenges. Their brains record ACEs as incidents and flashbacks. Therapy enables children to ‘reframe’ their memories, regulate their emotions, and develop healthy coping mechanisms. Or in short, to rebuild their lives.

The Cambridge Acorn Project, based in Histon, has 24 fully-trained therapists on its books who helped over 1,000 children and families last year. Fantastic! Most are offered a free one-hour weekly therapy session for a year, which is generally enough frequency and time to address the issues, and a lot longer than statutory services provide. Many referrals come from schools (with parental consent) but families can also drop in to one of the hubs and self-refer.

And CAP offers much more. It helps with housing; finding alternative education; suggesting art/drama/music/animal clubs and activities that will help the child recover and arranging (and paying for) that; and helping the parent apply for financial support.

It’s a super charity, founded and led by CEO Matt Edge. We also spent time with therapist Hannah Golding and fundraiser Kate Weir, and met others from their team. Everyone gave out a strong sense of vocation, mission and purpose; spoke with deep passion about their jobs; and of the privilege they felt of being able to assist children rebuild their lives - what an amazing team!

Guess what? They could do so much more if they had more money. If you’d like to (almost literally) save a child’s life, do please look at CAP’s web-site and consider donating. Or, go to the Fulbourn Feast (28 June) or Girton Feast (11 July) and buy one of their teddy-bears!

11/06/2026

BOYS WITH (VERY) BIG TOYS
Prickwillow Engine Museum is a must for all men (and women) who like big, powerful, noisy engines - we’re not talking car engines or lawn-mower engines, we’re talking engines at least as big as a car and one as big as a medium-sized van.

Prickwillow is a small village (500 people) five miles outside Ely. It’s on the river and once was a vital pumping station as part of the fen drainage system.

How vital is vital? Prickwillow and most of the fens are below sea level, so yes: draining all day, every day, for the past 400 years, and still today, is indeed vital. Or else most of the fens would flood within a week, and every house would be submerged.

After a series of coal-fired steam pumps, in 1924 a huge Ipswich-made 25-ton diesel engine was installed, which ran continuously until it was replaced with an electric version in the 1970s. It’s a masterpiece of British engineering. It pumped 150,000 litres of water PER MINUTE for 50 years, raising the water 4 metres from low-lying fenland to a higher drainage d**e so it could then flow out to sea at the Wash.

The Prickwillow Museum is entirely run by a dozen volunteers. It holds that engine plus half-a-dozen other ones relocated from other nearby pumping stations. It’s not a big museum, but the machinery is really fun for anyone who likes classic British engineering, noise, power and vibrations. I’d highly recommend it to petrol-heads, local fen historians and children alike. Not only is it brilliant and interesting, it’s great fun.

I took the High Sheriff of Norfolk with me to visit - we both loved it, agreeing it was the best small museum we’d been to in ages.

A huge thanks to the volunteers of the Prickwillow Museum for keeping alive such an important part of our fen heritage, for devoting so much of their time to it, and for presenting it in such a great way.

Definitely go and visit!

11/06/2026

HIGH PRAISE FOR LITTLEPORT
Readers of my posts will know by now that I am a big fan of local councils, for two reasons.

First, I’m a big fan of democracy - which sounds a trite statement, but remember that we in England have been privileged to enjoy a recognisable form of democracy since the 1200s, while today only 45% of the world’s population lives in a full democracy, 15% in “hybrid regimes” (elections but with authoritarian tendencies), and 40% in full authoritarian rule (source: Economist Intelligence Unit). High Sheriffs are Returning Officers for county constituencies in General Elections, so we take democracy very seriously!

And secondly, by visiting all our 13 Town Councils across Cambridgeshire, I’m seeing first-hand what an amazingly-positive difference a well-run and focussed council can make to its Town.

Littleport Town Council (visit no. 11) is an exemplar.

Littleport is a historic fenland town 10 minutes north of Ely. A decade ago, its population was 6,000; in a decade’s time, it will be 16,000. Read those numbers again: that’s a huge house-building programme. It has a vibrant local economy, but also, because it’s on the main train line, it’s easily commutable to King’s Lynn, Cambridge and London.

The Town Council, under Chair Cllr Clive Webber (who’s lived in the area all his life) has embraced this growth challenge, using housebuilders’ contributions and other grants to build one and soon two community centres, revitalise the town centre, create public play areas (including skate facilities and a pump track), create youth facilities, establish clubs and community groups, and even create a new cemetery. Also, it’s launched a digital “Littleport What’s On” to publicise events, encourage people to organise more, and bring the community together.

I was exhausted just listening to what the Council, Councillors and Council Staff have done, and then super-impressed when Clive, Town Clerk Diane Lane and I drove round the town and visited many of their initiatives.

Very, very, very many congratulations to all involved at the Council for all their hard work and achievements in the face of a 2.5x increase in the Town’s population - it’s hugely impressive, and will greatly benefit existing and new residents. Full praise!

10/06/2026

NATURE, NATURE, NATURE
As Cambridgeshire continues to grow, expand and see unprecedented levels of new housing and development all over the county, we need to remember “nature, nature and nature” alongside all the building.

Covid taught us all how much we value green spaces. One of many charities focussed on preserving and growing green spaces, wild places and heritage sites in the south of the county is Cambridge Past, Present & Future, which used to be called The Cambridge Preservation Society when I was a trustee many years ago.

CPPF owns Wandlebury Country Park on the Gog Magog Hills south-east of Cambridge, and the Coton Countryside Reserve west of Cambridge; it also manages the world-famous Grantchester Meadows for their owner, King’s College. These three sites provide vital “green lungs” for Cambridge and its residents. It also owns a number of local heritage sites, all open to the public.

The stats are impressive: over the last decade, CPPF estimates that there’s been over 1,000,000 visits to its properties, including 12,000 schoolchildren on special trips. That’s how valued and important these sites are.

Last night was CPPF’s annual supporters party, tinged with a lots of sadness as it was also the retirement party for its inspirational CEO of the past 10 years, James Littlewood. Chair Karen Rothwell and incoming CEO Mike Hakata were among many present.

There’s a huge network of nature and environmental charities all over Cambridgeshire: a big thank-you to them, their staff, volunteers and supporters for all the work that they do for the residents of the county.
- - - - - - -
Wandlebury: “did you know?”:
1. It’s believed to be the site of an Ineni tribal fort, headed by our national heroine Queen Boudicea, and perhaps even the site of her second-last battle against the Romans - which she won - before the final battle which she sadly lost and died shortly afterwards.
2. It’s the burial place of a horse called Godolphin (died 1753). Before then, the English prioritised war horses - big, heavy and slow, but capable of carrying a knight in full heavy armour. But when horse-racing became a craze, something lighter and faster was needed, and three Arab horses were imported from Yemen (Godolphin), Turkey and Syria - from which all modern thoroughbred racehorses are descended.

09/06/2026

HOORAY FOR OUR COUNCILS
Our Cambridgeshire councils do so much for us, in so many ways, and have highly-dedicated staff working hard for residents. Today was Huntingdonshire District Council’s annual staff awards, where the “best of the best” could be acknowledged and thanked.

Huntingdonshire has about 190,000 residents living in 80,000 houses: it has some of the loveliest towns in the county, stretched out along the River Ouse (Huntingdon, Godmanchester, St Neots, St Ives) and not forgetting Ramsey, all with inspirational Mayors, and many glorious villages. Wherever you go, they talk about Oliver Cromwell as if he left a couple of years ago.

It’s District Council has about 630 staff. It’s generally-acknowledged to be very well-run, dynamic and extremely focussed on its residents.

At the ceremony compered by CEO Michelle Sacks, lots of staff got awards, but the overall Overall Awards Winner was Rob Mitchell, Community Resilience Manager, who most of his colleagues described as “our very own Clark Kent: never seen in the same room as Superman, and I know why”.

Cast your mind back to the terrible afternoon of Sat 1 Nov 2025 when there was a mass stabbing on a train whose driver quick-wittedly stopped it at Huntington Station. Hunts DC’s emergency response team earned national and international praise for its immediate, thorough and professional response. That was only possible thanks to the DC’s preparedness and ability to execute its contingency plans - and as we heard, that was down to Rob and his colleagues. It was horrific day, but one that left Hunts DC showered in praise.

So please join me in thanking all the hard-working staff of Huntingdonshire District Council - 630 people working for the benefit of 190,000 residents - and indeed of all council staff across our county.

High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire

16/06/2026

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