Ipswich seems to be forever championed by professional doomsters.
For some time, Ipswich’s ills have been blamed on central Government and the lack of appropriate help in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, Brexit, adverse economic winds (both local and international) and so on.
The subtext seems to be that if only there was a change of government, then towns like Ipswich would be on the receiving end of a cornucopia of monies sufficient to right all ills.
But recently another meme has come into view and this is to blame all ills on historical factors that worked against Ipswich’s interests.
A writer on the East Anglia Daily Times on February 6th lamented the founding of Suffolk County Council in 1974 and Ipswich’s consequential loss of County Borough Status and the subsequent winds that followed.
The writer affirmed that rarely ever has Ipswich had portfolio holders at Suffolk County Council with control over budgetary departments. Conveniently the writer overlooks the period between 1993 and 2005 when Labour controlled the County and leadership was provided by Chris Mole and Bryony Rudkin (both Ipswich based politicians)
Also overlooked is the year 2003/4 which saw an 18% increase in Ipswich’s Band D Council Tax.
The question arises whether 1974 is too recent a time to receive the blame for present circumstances.
There could be a sound argument that the backwash from the downfall of Thomas Wolsey lead to long term detrimental effects on the town, relieved only from time to time by economic happenstance, for example, by the coming of the railway.
Amongst other things Ipswich lost it ambition to host a third major university in the country rivalling Oxford and Cambridge. The resources were reallocated and for nearly 500 years Ipswich did not have a university it could call their own.
Wolsey’s downfall was caused by the Spanish Aragonese who had the money and the Medici Pope who needed powerful and moneyed allies. The Holy Roman Emperor was Catherine of Aragon’s nephew and there was no way the Pope was going against such a powerful force and grant Henry VIII the divorce he needed.
So, watch out for the next steps in this saga. Ipswich will look to blame the combination of various European powers colluding against our best interests. Once this seam is mined the limits are almost endless. The Norman French wiped away our nobility in 1066. The Vikings martyred King Edmund in 869 and in AD60 Boudicca was forced to march down the A12 to assert her rights against Roman (Italian) hegemony over East Anglia.
The EADT recently carried a report that Headlam Flooring planned to build a distribution centre on land adjacent to the Anglia Retail Park (on the A14 opposite Asda). Headlam are investing £15million and the new facility will include a 125,000 sq ft warehouse with loading and customer collection areas, offices and out-buildings. The construction and fit-out period is expected to take around a year and the new facility should be up and running by 2018. The building be built on green space adjacent to the former Park and Ride site. The new facility will support the development of Headlam’s regional floorcovering business which includes the Hadleigh-based Faithfull’s Flooring. The existing 80 employees in Hadleigh will be relocated to the new premises. For Headlam Flooring it all makes good sense – a purpose built facility with access to the A14. For Babergh it is a potential disaster. A significant business and 80 jobs move out of Hadleigh. Headlam had previously sought to build in Hadleigh on land alongside the Persimmon housing development off of Lady Lane. The problem with that proposal was that it was cheek by jowl with housing and the 24/7 operation was unsuitable for that location – on sloping ground with noise that could have been heard across half of Hadleigh. The question we must ask is how have Babergh allowed this development to slip through its fingers. There are plenty of former airfield sites ripe for development. There is even one in Raydon almost within sight of the A12. Ipswich has its own questions to ask. Why are there no existing sites (like the former Park and Rides) which might be suitable? Why isn’t Headlam taking space on the Ransome’s Europark? Once again, I fear Hadleigh is being let down by the people who should be serving it. If local government is not looking after the people it serves and those who pay their wages, who are they looking after?
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