On Thursday 10th October 2024, Peterborough Speedway Consortium members Mick Bratley and Brian Connolly had an online teams call with Sam Carling MP. Local Ward Councillor, Julie Stevenson was also invited onto the call.

Sam is the newly elected Labour MP for North West Cambridgeshire and his constituency covers a large part of Peterborough and includes the Showground. Sam is known as the ‘baby of the house’ in Westminster and is only 22 years old.

Mick Bratley reflected on the meeting and said: ‘We were obviously grateful to Sam for giving up time in his busy schedule.

Although he has to remain impartial, Sam was very interested in our campaign and totally understood our main points regarding the National Planning Policy Framework paragraph 103 and The Peterborough Local Plan policy LP30 which are the cornerstones of our campaign. Sam was also very interested in British Speedway generally and asked many questions on our sport and we were only to happy to inform him.

Although he is the youngest member in parliament, I have to say he belies his age, myself and Brian Connolly were very impressed with him and we look forward to sitting down with him again in the future’.

It is known that Sam sent a personal letter to all the Planning Committee members ahead of the Tuesday 15th October 2024 planning meeting where the Showground applications were heard.