Suffolk Chamber of Commerce on long-term Ipswich traffic fix

The statement from Suffolk Chamber of Commerce comes as Suffolk County Council announced a report costing around £300,000 will be conducted into seeing what solution, including a second bridge, Ipswich Northern Bypass or tunnel underneath the river is the best long-term fix.

Suffolk County Council's cabinet will meet on Thursday, September 17 to discuss up to six options, with the Orwell Bridge requiring at least two pieces of major work between 2026 and 2031.

Paul Simon, Suffolk Chamber of Commerce (Image: Lucy Taylor)

Suffolk Chamber of Commerce said they welcome the county council’s strategic position paper on boosting the resilience of the A14 and the greater Ipswich roads system.

"It offers a much-needed, timely and evidenced reset of the various options – including some that have never been properly evaluated - that are available to addressing the personal and economic costs of increasing congestion and delays," Paul Simon, head of public affairs and strategic communications at Suffolk Chamber of Commerce said.

"As such, it is a potentially game-changing opportunity which the whole Suffolk system must now constructively seize and work together on, subject to a number of points that need clarifying.

“The recommendations in the paper are broadly in accord with our longstanding view that no strategic options should be ruled out and all should be worked up to at least an outline business case for Government and other funding bodies to advance to a delivery stage.

"We appreciate the speed at which the outline business case will be prepared between now and spring next year – a sure sign that the County Council, regardless of the future of local government reorganisation, is looking to develop a set of oven-ready cohort of ideas for others to then work up in detail.

Orwell Bridge is the only direct road link between the A12 and A14 (Image: Sonya Duncan)

“Suffolk Chamber looks forward to playing a key role in representing the best interests of the business community over the next phase of this project.

"We will continue to both offer our convening powers in bringing together different groups and individuals to purposefully contribute to the outline business case and to provide evidence as to how the ‘do-nothing’ approach of recent years is costing businesses.

"We are launching our second Broken Down survey later this month and hope that the resulting data and case studies will be useful in sharpening the detail in the outline business case.”