Ipswich Garden Suburb

We must now call the proposals, heretofore always known as The Northern Fringe, The Ipswich Garden Suburb.

It is, of course, not a Garden Suburb as conceived by Ebenezer Howard over a hundred years ago because the original conception was of an independent benevolent corporation owning all the land whereas our Garden Suburb's land is owned by a multitude of developers who, led by CBRE (self-styled, the globe's development leaders), have one over-arching aim: to make money.

To that end they can employ an army of skilled and experienced professionals to manage their expectations. When faced with such a juggernaut it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the People's desires.

Nevertheless, they have lost the very first round; the full planning application to build a few houses of poor design with no infrastructure has been withdrawn. Suffolk County Council, who have total authority for the planning and maintenance for every highway everywhere in Suffolk (the A14 and the A12 southwards remain with the Highways Agency), reviewed the Traffic Analysis and Transport Plans; they have reported to Ipswich Borough Council, the responsible planning authority, that they could not approve the development without a considerable improvement in these two areas. Several other important considerations have not been solved by the developers, in particular the house design, the timing of the on-site infrastructure and the sewer drainage.

So, Ipswich Borough Council has agreed that the hearing of the outline application for the area to the south of the railway and abutting onto Westerfield Road will be put back to September 2015. We expect the revisions by the end of May.