Other Strategic Planning

Other suggestions and comments in brief:

• We argue the case for a Visitor Centre (Anglo-Saxon etc?) at the Waterfront to give Ipswich a stronger pull as a tourist destination. Several small schemes won't compensate for this lack.
• We need a more radical Shared Space approach to designing cycle and pedestrian routes -- wider pavements accommodating pedestrians and cyclists. Specifically, the routes across the lock from the Waterfront to the town centre, and from the station up Princes Street to Greyfriars are uninviting; slow dangerous and ugly.
• Ipswich Village West: Assuming Ipswich Buses leave Constantine Road and the building is to be retained, why not offer it to Ipswich Transport Museum, and they could even reinstate the turning circle and have a tram running round it! Then the museum would be a town centre attraction rather than a suburban one
• Fison House, Princes Street: This should be retained as an employment site and the actual building retained. This is a distinctive office building by Ipswich's best modern architect, Birkin Haward. The concrete piloti and fenestration are particularly noteworthy.
• Provision of health services: it is a sound strategic move to place all hospital-type services at Heath Road. However, as the largest employment site in the Borough and the biggest traffic generator, much more work will have to be done to improve transport matters. It would be wise not to make strategic plans about GP services and health centres until the outcome of Lord Darzi's report into the delivery of Primary care services is clear for Ipswich.
• Site allocations for new housing. See our concern in our introductory letter about developing "every last plot".

[Editor: Some of the most obvious public anxieties about the Development Framework arise from the 61 different sites mentioned for possible development, ranging from 512 housing units at St Clement's Hospital grounds to as few as four units elsewhere. Some neighbours of these possible development sites have been taken aback to see notices put up nearby without their having been informed in other ways

However, some of these sites may not become available in any foreseeable future, while unspecified new ones may occur as 'windfall' sites. The naming of these 61 sites is clearly the Borough Council's attempt to get somewhere near the Government's target of 6,779 housing units required in Ipswich. Even so, with all these, plus the 3,450 built or building in the centre, the total would still be about 400 short!]