Turning Our Town Around

University Campus Suffolk (Now University of Suffolk)
New Anglia Enterprise Partnership for Norfolk and Suffolk
Suffolk County Council
Ipswich Central
Ipswich Borough Council
Ben Gummer (then MP for Ipswich)

Turning Our Town Around

Ipswich, along with most town centres nationally, has felt the effects of on-line retailing and a general migration away from town centre shopping. This problem was compounded in 2012 when Waitrose and John Lewis chose out of town sites for their major new stores. At around this time, Sir Stuart Rose, one of the country’s foremost experts in retail strategy, was publicly critical of the town centre although he subsequently provided very valuable advice and support to the town’s improvement initiatives.

One of these initiatives was to form a Business Improvement District (BID) for Ipswich. A BID is defined as an area where local businesses elect to pay an additional levy to fund projects within the district’s boundaries. Ipswich Central was formed as a limited company to implement projects identified as part of the Ipswich BID. Sir Stuart worked closely with the Ipswich Central Executive Director Paul Clement to produce a ‘Vision for Ipswich’ aimed at identifying practical ways to revitalise the town.

Barefoot and Gilles was appointed by Ipswich Central to produce a report which would combine the input from a wide range of local stakeholders and illustrate the policies that had been agreed. We called this report ‘Turning Our Town Around’, a title which recognised the need for improvement but also signalled an intention to address the town’s problems.

‘Turning Our Town Around’, was released in July 2015 and set out a practical and innovative approach to re-shaping the town centre, concentrating retail on a north-south axis linking the traditional town centre with the vibrant Waterfront. The report also identified a series of ‘quarters’ within the larger central area, each with its own recognisable character.

The report was significant in that it was the first attempt for some time to set out an overall ‘vision’ for the town, concentrating on the character of the public realm to produce a deliverable programme of improvements which collectively would change the public’s perception of Ipswich.