Felixstowe Radio

A group called Felixstowe Futures, based at Suffolk Coastal Council HQ in Woodbridge have put forward 27 suggestions tol improve the resort area of Felixstowe. 

A Public Consultation event was held in the Leisure Centre at Felixstowe on Friday and Saturday, 12-13th July to give the people of Felixstowe the opportunity to make a contribution to a blueprint for the seafront and town centre.

In the hall 27 A1 size posters had been stuck to the wall, each describing what is there now, and what could be there in the future. That set of suggestions is at Felixstowe Futures web site (as a pdf).

Consultation meant choosing which of these 27 schemes you thought were the best. That is not consultation.

We are building a Master Plan for Felixstowe that is based on the wishes of the local community - we welcome your contributions.

Here are our responses to the 27 suggestions. 

1. It starts with the usual cry - nothing will happen unless we can get the money (they have paid David Lock Associates a grand sum to produce the plans so far - we suspect close to £200,000 as this is the second plan).

2. Seafront leisure path - from Landguard to Felixstowe Ferry - we wrote to the Environment Secretary, then David Miliband, in April asking for Cobbold Point to have a disabled access walkway as this would allow wheelchair access from Landguard to the Ferry.

3. Art gallery at the south seafront Martello Tower. A nonsense really, because the area does not attract the 'Aldeburgh/Southwold' crowd that will make a gallery viable - what will they do once they've spent 5 minutes in the gallery - it's not a huge building - sit on the seafront throwing chips at seagulls?

4. A further indication of middle-class thinking is a farmers market in the station car park or the Triangle - have they walked around the existing Sunday market, seen the stalls, seen what sells, seen who buys? What retail survey is this farmers dream based upon?

5. Kids Hang-Out - the conclusion seems to be that young people need rubbish bins at the Triangle. They will be pleased. For £40,000 Wells, in Somerset, built a skatboard Park. SCDC say they have £85,000 available - why don't they start building now? Something is better than nothing.

6. Having bankrupted a local businessman by forcing him to close down his coffee shop in Hamilton Road it is now proposed to allow more cafes, bars and restaurants in the town to encourage visitors in the evening. Closing Hamilton Road, allowing seating in the street, seems like a good idea - in fact local people have been saying that for years.

7. A circular bus route that goes up Bent Hill, no doubt supported by the local councillor who wants to turn Bent Hill into a one-way street, but give priority to the roads at the top of the hill, so that'll give everyone a chance to practise their hill starts. The real reason here is to get people out of town into the 'new retail park' planned by Dock Gate One. Shopkeepers in Hamilton Road should be wary.

8. Cycle routes: from Bath Hill to the Spa Pavilion, and through Langer Park - we'll all feel very encouraged to hop on a bike once those are completed. How about something radical - proper cycle lanes, protected by kerbing not just white lines, and provision made for cyclists at dangerous junctions - at present all we see is ENDS. Look at the 110 metres of cycle path outside the Leisure Centre - at the end of this long ride you have a choice, turn left on to the promenade to be faced by the Council's illegal NO Cycling sign, because the prom is a designated public highway, or turn right to face pedestrian barriers.

9. Gateways: the planners clearly don't use Beach Station Road where railway shunting frequently closes the crossing gates, and who allowed the beautiful station to be knocked down one Bank Holiday weekend? There are no attractive ways into the town, but then much of the town is no longer attractive. There's no easy access to the Ferry end - what shall we do - add signage to Colneis Avenue? As for brown tourist signs - what will they reveal - the amusement arcades, the funfair that's not been improved in 50 years?

10.   The Alex is a success - but is marred by a lack of sea view - so ban access to Undercliff Road and Bent Hill, build a multi-storey car park at Convalescent Hill that will also provide the vital lift access to town from beach.

11. The conservation area requirements are largely ignored by the council's own employees who allow dropped kerbs, lovely shops turned into social housing in Gainsborough Road/Constable Road which is now pushing up insurance rates because of the damage caused by vandals, and indicriminate planning that allows a porch on one house in a terrace of Edwardian houses, that disregards its own instructions about replacement windows and doors and replacement roofs.

12. The Triangle - they seem to propose removing the toilets- a desperately needed resource - in favour of touchy-feely seating especially by visitors coming by train, as these are the first chances they get now that the toilets at Great Eastern Square have been closed. This is a planner's dream world.

13. Seafront Gardens: there's a queue of local businesses wanting to put their advertising hoarding in these gardens, and then who who will want to walk through the forest of boards? Has anyone analysed the use of these gardens? How many people do they attract, compared with the amusement arcades?

14. Access to beach from town: a proverbial problem, but the idea of an observation tower can never be self-supporting. A multi-storey car park beside the Spa Pavilion would be, providing much needed parking for theatre and beach users and access to the town, and it will make money - surely that must attract Suffolk Coastal's attention, money is their sole pre-occupation.

15. The pier: should be compulsory purchased as it is the most important asset in the town. The present owners have done nothing to improve the pier and should not be encouraged to form part of the regeneration as it is their approach that has done so much to degrade the character of this part of the town, together with the destruction of the Pavilion.

16. 22 years ago the council forced 1,000 beach hut owners off the south seafront land, at a loss of millions in rates, and the decay of shops in Beach Station Road. Now they want more beach huts? Where will these be? On the beach so that promenade users have nothing to look at but the back of a beach hut? They could go back on the south seafront, and we could have a competition to design the Felixstowe Hut for 21st Century.

17. Convalescent Hill: an hotel is planned (is that because the land is owned by SCDC?) on the car park. So where will the cars go? There's another plan for the Town Hall - which SCDC are selling to Felixstowe Town Council (who, in another guise, gave it to SCDC) lumbering Felixstowe rate payers with a 25-year mortgage on a building they already own. Then there's the Tourist Information building next door, which has stood empty for some years. Local community groups have asked to rent that space, but the Council want commercial rents, so the place stands empty. How about building the hotel over the Town Hall and gardens? Topping it all with a roof garden - nothing lost, everything gained, and we have a multi-storey car park on the car park, with a lift to the town.

18. Hamilton Road to be made more attractive to pedestrians. An excellent idea, but planners beware, the man responsible for a similar scheme in Colchester had a nervous breakdown as a result. Shop owners must realise they will gain more if it is just pedestrian access.

19. Spa Pavilion: here's irony because we put forward a team to manage the Spa Pavilion, which made all the suggestions now proposed: smaller theatre, beach access cafe, community arts, only to be told we had no financial history, and so we now pay £197,400 a year to a management company who give us lookalike bands, and little else. We'd support the revitalisation of the Spa but only if it is managed by local people.

20. Winter Garden beside the Town Hall: is this a joke or just a place for councillors to enjoy lunch?

21. It's here that we get the most important factor in any planning for Felixstowe: sea defences. Dredging has taken place since 1962, and you can't keep digging a hole without the sides falling in (you can if you don't want to upset the Chinese owners of Felixstowe Port). There's a great plan to build a huge marina, housing 5,000 craft, that will stretch from Cobbolds Point to Landguard - rest assured that David Lock will not consider this seriously, even though it has been costed and feasibility studies put together by experts.

22. A water sports centre at end of pier, or elsewhere. The more you look at this suggestions the more it becomes apparaent that they all rely upon http://www.cabe.org.uk/ which is the government's advisor on the environment, so why an SCDC planner couldn't have spent a morning on that site instead of paying David Lock thousands to do it is an important question. It defies comment.

23. Solar supermarket, the doctors surgery, the car park - all are to go, in favour of social housing and a Waitrose supermarket: there's confusion in the minds of these planning advisors that reveals fundamental weaknesses akin to 'would you buy a used town from this man?'

24. Hurrah! David Lock agree that a retail park at Dock Gateway One, as approved by SCDC is wrong. Despite previous criticisms we applaud this piece of common sense.

25. The Ordnance: we are back to social housing again as the catch-all solution when the West end of Felixstowe has no shops, no health services: doctor, dentist, optician, indeed no facilities at all. The old bus station could be used properly, and a retail park here would make some sense, provided there is easy (lifts) pedestrian access to the rest of the town.

26. Beach Station land. Much grief has been spilt here already (clearly David Lock don't know the real story) but let's look to a wider future. From the Buregate to the Nature Reserve at Landguard the whole of that seaside area is now close to derelict - they burnt down the Herman de Stern, the only decent building along there, it is now time to knock down the rest - we have the chance to start again (providing the sea is kept in the bay). We are chronically short of good hotels, there's space for an ambitious centre - combined with the marina it would bring vitality to the region that would melt Snoasis. Let's not titivate.

27. Cavendish Hotel: it was a disgrace to knock it down, and then to leave that space empty for so many years. Let's redevelop the whole of the south seafront area - properly. It's easier to get 'real 'money' than the small sums that Suffolk Coastal Council have to spend. As someone who built many of the shopping centres in the country, including Lakeside (OK I apologise) I know that investmentcan be encouraged provided the scheme is ambitious enough.        

We received the press release about the public consultation on 11th July - so there's was not much time to distribute this information yet we are told that the Council are keen to tell as much of the Felixstowe community as possible of this exhibition and the purpose of the press release was to ask for our support in this, by printing the poster (black & white will be adequate) and, where appropriate, displaying it internally for staff and also in an area where the public are likely to see it.

If you have any ideas about improving Felixstowe - we'd like to hear - as we are preparing a Master Plan of our own. Email comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it