Sandyhill Lane. The site is one of the original Fison's fertilizer factories and thus is owned by Norsk Hydro. The site, clearly brownfield, has a lapsed planning permission for a mixed development including retail. Now the developers propose 85 new houses; this is to be welcomed and the outline proposal was granted, subject to legal agreement to no less than 44 conditions. Decontamination will cost £3.5m.
Harris Way. Permission was granted subject to consideration of a pedestrian and cycle bridge across the Gipping for the erection of a huge floor-covering warehouse on the Harris Bacon factory site. This replaces the proposals for a similar warehouse to the north-east of the Anglia Retail Park, on the edge of Ipswich affecting the countryside to the north.
49 Orford Street. Any proposal to alter the street appearance of a house in a Conservation Area subject to an article 4 direction has to be considered with concern. The applicant’s architects, Modece of Bury St Edmunds, have applied to insert two roof lights on the Orford Street elevation; additionally they wish to replace the iron cover to the coal chute with glass. On the east elevation, a roof light and a full size dormer window is proposed. Clearly the owner wishes to utilise all the volume as habitable.
15 Warrington Road. A reapplication of a modification of the previously withdrawn application which claims to have answered the objections of the planners and local objectors. There is no Warrington Road elevation view available. Permission refused again on November 16 2018 because of back garden-snatching too near neighbours and loss of donor garden (Policy DM 13) and loss of trees.
Land to rear of 133 to 137 Valley Road. In 2016 permission was granted to build three houses on part of this site using the rear gardens of the three houses in Valley road but leaving the orchard unused. Now the proposal is for nine dwellings, eight being 2½ storey houses and one chalet bungalow. The orchard with some 25 fruit trees would be lost though the sycamores, oak and limes retained.
We object because this is over-development both in scale and in numbers of dwellings and hence traffic on to Valley Road. The spacious nature of the surrounding area will not be featured.
To be building replicas of 1930s houses 90 years later seems to us to be a very retrograde step. These houses are expensive to build, have many unsustainable features and appear to be out of some Ideal Homes design book of yesteryear. The development at 151 Valley Road shows that a new development can be modern and yet fit in, the criterion by which neighbours always judge new builds. Better to be good, than to fit in.
57 Henley Road. Having lost two applications and an appeal to build a house in the back garden, the owners have put the house on the market and have applied for permission to convert to a single dwelling. Hopefully, a little victory.
Sorting Office. Retrospective application for change of use from a Mechanised Letter Office to a Mail Processing Unit. This change took place some time ago and Ipswich mail is sorted in Chelmsford. And it’s transferred there in trucks. There is no change in class (B8 to B8) . The IBC property company own the site and that's why they had to apply.
Ormiston (formerly Thurleston) Academy. A new 3 storey building will be built to the north of the existing school. There should be no interruption of studies. It will provide for 900 students aged 11-16 (Key Stage 3-4) It includes soft and hard sports areas and all other facilities i.e. it is about the same size as Thurleston. It will retain the existing connections to the Thomas Wolsey School and the existing sports hall.
Thurleston School was designed by Johns Slater Haward (job architect J.C. Butters later R.F. Westlake) in 1956-8 as Ipswich's first post-war secondary school. ‘Composite in situ and pre-cast concrete frame with patterned pre-cast horizontal wall-panelling. A large rectangular domed sports hall 1974-5, a modified form with spherical section on square plan’ (Pevsner). None of the  buildings are listed. However it, is near the Church of St Mary & St Botolph, Whitton (Listed at Grade II). Clearly, the original was built to the most up-to-date ideas of the mid-fifties which were a period when new schools were being designed to the very highest standards of innovatory architecture with a huge amount of thought and money. Its replacement will be distinguished by its ordinariness.
104 London Road. The existing derelict, 3 bay, pleasant early C19 cottage will be demolished and replaced by four dwellings. This is not a good plan and we will ask for the cottage to be retained and the long plot used for dwellings in a different manner.                   
Mike Cook