Lib Dem mayoral candidate Rod Cantrill launched his campaign to become the £70,000 per year mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough at March Town Hall on Saturday.

The Cambridge city councillor said: “I believe people living across our area think it’s time we did politics differently across Peterborough and Cambridgeshire.

“The launch was the start of that change. The Lib Dems and I are determined to fight to deliver the positive change our area desperately needs.

“For too long residents’ voices have been ignored by those in power, but this election is a huge chance to change that.

“Just as I have been a listening councillor, I will be a listening mayor who works with residents to improve their communities.”

At the launch, he pledged to “put sustainability at the heart of everything” and talked about how he wanted to use his business and local government experience “to improve the lives of people in every corner of the region”.

He added that “for too long local and Westminster politicians have prevented once thriving communities across our area, like March, from succeeding and that the mayoralty was a huge opportunity to reverse this trend.”

Cllr Cantrill argued that “the disastrous Greater Cambridge City Deal, in the south of the region, has proved that the Labour-Conservative top down approach to devolution has failed and it was high time politicians started putting residents first”.

He pledged to be “a listening mayor, someone who works with residents to deliver positive change for their communities”.

Over the next few weeks he and his campaign team will be delivering surveys to residents in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire.

The Cambridge city councillor also told the audience he believed “people are fed up with politicians taking short term decisions” and that instead “he will make sustainability a key foundation of his mayoralty”.