I have my iPad photos backed up into the cloud, can I now delete them off my iPad to free up space without loosing them in the cloud?

No.

iCloud Photos is a syncing service. Any photo you delete from a device where iCloud Photos is turned on will also be deleted from iCloud and from any other device connected to iCloud Photos. You can potentially reduce the storage space required on a device by turning on Optimize Storage. See: Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Apple does not currently offer cloud-only storage for photos. If that is what you want or need, you may want to explore 3rd party options such as Google Photos or Dropbox.

Another way that photos may be on iCloud (if you don’t have iCloud Photos turned on) is via a backup of an iOS device. The only thing you can do with a backup is use it to restore a device or set up a new device. The contents of backups are not viewable at iCloud.com and if you delete a photo from a device it will not be included in future backups and will be lost.

If you refer to Apple iCloud storage - no, you cannot delete your photos from the iPad without also deleting your photos from iCloud. While iCloud provides a backup of locally stored photo’s and data, iCloud is principally a synchronisation service for your Apple devices.

If instead you refer to another Cloud storage service (such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Box etc.), deletion from your iPad will not necessarily remove the photos copied/moved to the Cloud service.