whitespace issue

Hi, Im using CKEDITOR and have encountered a problem with whitespace being trimmed. Here is the problem

THIS
<h1><?=$city;?> Team - Book Now</h1>

IS CHANGED TO THIS
<h1>
<?=$city;?>Team - Book Now</h1>

As you can see im echoing a PHP var here but ckeditor things <?=$city;?> is the start of a tag hence it is removing the whitespace before Team

I've searched for hours and tried various suggestions but none work. I am using jquery to call ckeditor so if you have a solution, jquery would be best way to provide it

THANK YOU!