> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ipswich.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 'All options' on the table for A14...especially a tunnel - URL: https://www.ipswich.co.uk/all-options-on-the-table-for-a14-especially-a-tunnel/ - Published: 2026-09-18T07:21:58.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-18T08:30:06.000Z - Description: Suffolk County Council told councillors on Thursday, 17 September, that it had no preferred solution to the A14 around Ipswich, and that "all options" remained firmly on the table as its cabinet approved £300,000 for a Pre-Strategic Outline Business Case. - Author: Oliver Rouane-Williams - Tags: Long Reads, Northern Bypass, Suffolk County Council, Christopher Hudson, Michael Hadwen, Andrew Stringer, Richard Rout When Cllr Christopher Hudson switched on his microphone on Thursday afternoon, the cabinet member for transport and highways had £300,000 to justify. In his usual idiosyncratic style, he made the case for spending it on turning his administration's cabinet paper into a Pre-Strategic Outline Business Case (PSOBC for short) robust enough to put in front of government – one powerful enough, as he told members later, that the Department for Transport would not "laugh us out the room". The Orwell Bridge was "a critical piece of national infrastructure", he said. "Many believe the northern route is the panacea." By the end of the afternoon he had called for a "strategic multiverse of solutions", conceded that "we don't know what we don't know", and boiled the whole question down to "C. A. S. H. Cash. Money. Quids". Amongst the plethora of clichés, acronyms and analogies, however, was a clear message: no scheme was being approved, no option was being ruled out, and whatever comes out of the Pre-Strategic Outline Business Case is Westminster's responsibility to fund, and Westminster's alone. Cabinet members approved the £300,000 recommendation unanimously. But the 72-page report they were considering does more than promise an open mind. Turn your attention to Appendix A and you will find an initial sift of more than 20 possible solutions, each scored against four objectives. On that scoring, a tunnel underneath the River Orwell from the A12 comes joint top. It is perhaps Endeavour House's worst-kept secret that, despite the 'we want to avoid a judicial review at all costs' rhetoric, a tunnel is council leader Michael Hadwen's preferred route – figuratively and literally. ## The options A number of options have been reviewed by Reform UK administration and detailed in the paper. Every option is scored from nought to five against four objectives and the totals are added up. Objective 1 – providing a viable alternative route when the Orwell Bridge is closed or eventually needs replacing – is counted twice. The paper says that the weighting was applied "to reflect the importance of long-term Orwell Bridge resilience", but that "the weighting, rationale and sensitivity of the results should be made explicit in the next stage, so the process remains transparent, auditable and not pre-determined". At the top of the leaderboard, a tunnel crossing the Orwell from the A12, avoiding the Copdock interchange, scores 19\. So does a new bridge on an outer alignment with a link to the A12. A straight replacement bridge scores 18. The three Ipswich Northern Route alignments – inner, mid and outer, each assessed as single and dual carriageway – all score 15, as does an Upper Orwell-style town centre crossing. A second tunnel option, running from Felixstowe to Harwich, scores 14. Below them sit a number of "tactical" measures that have half a chance of being delivered this decade: An upgrade to the Copdock junction scores 12\. Local junction improvements and short bypasses around Claydon, Henley and Westerfield score 12, and a similar package on the B1078 and B1079 scores 11\. Rail freight schemes at Ely and Haughley score eight apiece. An updated urban traffic management system for Ipswich scores seven, as does improved diversion route management using variable message signs. Extending the variable speed limit along the whole A14 around Ipswich scores six. Stationing National Highways traffic officers in Suffolk scores three, as does raising the height of the bridge parapets. The ordering is close to an inversion of where the council's evidence base stood seven years ago, under the previous Conservative administration. The 2019 Strategic Outline Business Case appraised a long list of 32 options. The paper records that the highest-scoring strategic options then "were variants of the Ipswich Northern Route", and that options 24 and 25 – a new Orwell bridge and a tunnel under the river – were "discounted on grounds of cost and complexity". ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/2026/09/orwell-bridge-left-side--1-.jpg) The Orwell Bridge in Ipswich (Photo: Oliver Rouane-Williams/Ipswich.co.uk) The explanation offered for the shift is not that new evidence has emerged about tunnels in the seven years that have passed – though we understand the council believes this to be the case – it is that the question being asked has changed. Neither the Northern Route nor the Upper Orwell Crossings, the paper argues, was ever designed as a direct replacement for the Orwell Bridge. The Northern Route was "primarily a growth, network-capacity and connectivity scheme"; the Upper Orwell Crossing was "primarily an urban connectivity and regeneration scheme". Score them against an objective about replacing the bridge, weighted twice, and they fall behind schemes that cross the same water. How urgent that replacement objective is remains open to argument. Cllr Hudson told the meeting the Orwell was "a failing bridge that is coming to the end of its life". The report is more cautious, placing full replacement "at the end of its service life (likely to be beyond 2100)" and saying the shift from episodic disruption to a structural resilience problem "is not likely until the latter years of this century". ## The process What cabinet approved is not a scheme but a document about whether a scheme is worth pursuing. The Pre-Strategic Outline Business Case is expected to take around six months and produce a report by spring 2027, establishing "whether there is a credible route to a full Strategic Outline Business Case". After that comes a Strategic Outline Business Case in late 2028, an Outline Business Case by mid 2030, and a Full Business Case by late 2032\. Advocacy work follows from 2033 to 2035, with construction to begin from 2036 at the earliest. Each stage requires a Department for Transport gateway, and the paper concedes that progression "is outside the Council's direct control". The insistence that nothing has been chosen ran through both the report and the meeting. The reason doesn't require much investigation. Selecting a preferred option without going through a full and proper process "would prejudge the business-case process and could expose the Council's decision to legal challenge, delay, additional development costs and abortive work". Put another way: fresh off the back of its recent successful legal challenge over the government on Local Government Reorganisation, the council is keen to avoid being on the receiving end of a judicial review of their own. The same caution is applied to the council's scoring. It is "qualitative" at this stage, the paper says, and should be treated as "an initial strategic sift rather than a definitive option appraisal". Consultation was the other recurring theme. Cllr Hudson offered councillors a workshop rather than what he called a talking shop, so members could feed ideas in before any solution returns to cabinet, along with assurances that his party were the "party of the people" and "110% democratic". On the subject of assurances, he offers his assurances to councillors that residents would be able to influence the PSOBC – though stopped short of offering them a guarantee. Not every concern in the room was about Ipswich. Cllr Keith Walham, the County Councillor for the Stowmarket West electoral division, argued the council was too focused on the county town, pointing out that when the A14 closes at Stowmarket, Needham Market or Newmarket all traffic is diverted through Needham Market. Cllr Hudson replied that the work covered the whole A14 corridor rather than the bridge alone. Not one to miss an opportunity for point scoring, council leader Michael Hadwen noted for the record, and to Ipswich.co.uk, that it was the first time he had been accused of thinking too much about Ipswich in the chamber. ## The opposition The Conservative group welcomed the report while reserving judgement on what follows. Cllr Joe Mason, the group's shadow spokesperson for highways, transport strategy and property, pointed out that the paper was "in many respects the easiest part" of addressing the problem. "All options are on the table, nothing is properly costed and no community is yet directly affected," he said. "When a preferred option is chosen and costs are established, the administration will then have to nail its colours to the mast, and that is altogether more difficult. This is before we even get to Suffolk raising the likely £1 billion-plus required to introduce a solution." He's not wrong. The group has also put an objection to the front-runner on the record, noting that a tunnel was considered last time and dropped as the most expensive option. "I'm also fearful that while a tunnel will be many people's preferred option, including, on face value, mine, it will likely be the most costly by some huge margin due to the underlying geology in the area – that of marine and river sands and gravels, soft clays and weak chalk," Cllr Mason said. "We're seeing elsewhere in the country how such conditions can lead to rapidly spiralling costs. Any chosen solution must be realistic, and Suffolk must not be promised a unicorn-style project that never materialises." With nothing operational before 2040, the group wants to know what happens in the meantime. Cllr Mason said he was pleased to receive an assurance from Cllr Hudson that nearer-term, smaller interventions would be considered alongside the long-term fix. "We now want to hear exactly what those interventions are, how quickly they could be delivered and what they would cost," he said. The group also argues that residents living around the proposed northern route have faced uncertainty for years and "deserve clarity", as well as a meaningful consultation. The Green group, the official opposition, went further, objecting not to which option wins but to whether any of them can be paid for. Cllr Andrew Stringer, the group leader, asked in the chamber why the £300,000 had not been made conditional on central government committing to fund the rail improvements at Ely and Haughley. Cllr Hadwen was quick to stress that the £300,000 required to develop the PSOBC was central government grant funding and not local taxpayer money. Afterwards, Cllr Stringer called the exercise "another waste of money". "The council still doesn't have the money for a northern bypass or an alternative Orwell crossing and has no guarantee it could find funding for them," he said. "Cllr Hudson acknowledged in the meeting that the council had no money to do any of it." His group's preference is the rail improvements, and its figures come from the council's own report: improvements at Ely Junction would allow 2,900 extra freight services a year to and from Felixstowe, taking 98,000 lorry journeys off the roads. "This wouldn't just benefit Ipswich in the event the bridge is closed, it would improve the traffic in all the towns along the A14 which suffer when there are problems with the road," Cllr Stringer said. Cllr Stringer also claimed the economic expansion Reform UK has promised for Suffolk "will lead to a 40% increase in traffic before any of these potential schemes sees the light of day, while the shovel-ready rail improvements that would take 98,000 HGVs off the A14 are still unfunded". In the council's scoring, the rail schemes each total eight points. In the chamber, Leader of the Labour Group at the council, Martin Cook – a long-time supporter of a bypass – tried and failed to get Cllr Hudson – a long-time opposer of a bypass – to commit to a simple yes or no answer on whether or not Ipswich needs a bypass. Following the meeting, he said: "I asked Cllr Hudson whether he personally believes Ipswich needs a northern bypass, yes or no. He wouldn't say. He voted against it at full Council in July last year and at the Cabinet meeting he described that vote as 'a beautiful piece of interesting history'. "He told Cabinet the 2020 work on the northern route 'wasn't done completely'. Six hours later he wrote to me that the northern bypass option 'is not out of date'. Both are his words. "The council reached Strategic Outline Business Case stage in 2020\. On the timetable agreed at the Cabinet meeting it gets back there in 2028\. Eight lost years." ## The money The numbers in the report are large and, understandably at this stage, imprecise. Major infrastructure options could cost £500m to more than £1bn; elsewhere the paper warns that the more complex road-based interventions are likely to fall "in the range of £500m to £5b". Development costs alone – design, surveys, modelling, ground investigations – could reach £200m on the most complex options, representing 10% to 20% of the total. A minimum local contribution of 15% is typical for locally promoted schemes after approval of the Strategic Outline Business Case, which on a £500m to £1bn scheme the paper puts at £75m to £150m. The mechanisms identified for raising it are unappealing: a roof tax of £5,000 to £10,000 on each new home, which the paper concedes "would likely be challenging in terms of viability", or land value capture. None of that featured in Cllr Hudson's framing – something the former Conservative leader of the council picked up on. The A14, Hudson told cabinet repeatedly, is "a problem created in Westminster" that Westminster will have to pay for. Cllr Julia Ewart put a different premise to the cabinet. Rather than waiting on the Treasury, she urged members to work on the financing as hard as they were working on the concept, pointing to the Dartford Crossing charge and to public-private partnerships, and suggesting the council and the Chamber of Commerce should be thinking about private investment and tolls. She also noted that the Port of Felixstowe may soon have a new owner, and that an asset of that kind in council hands would represent significant value. The distinction is not academic, and it bears directly on which option wins. Charging for an estuarial crossing is a well-established model in England: Dartford, the Tyne Tunnel, the Mersey Gateway and the Humber Bridge all levy tolls or charges on drivers. A bridge or tunnel carrying strategic traffic can therefore generate revenue in a way that a rural bypass cannot. Of the six themes the council will model, the two crossing options are the only ones that could, in principle, part- or fully-fund themselves. The report does not go there. It discusses road pricing and congestion charging only as demand-management tools for Ipswich, concluding that such measures "would need to be introduced nationally, to avoid damaging the viability of Ipswich". Tolling a new crossing to fund its construction, or bringing in private capital to build it, is not among the funding routes assessed – at least not in the paper. Cllr Hudson told Cllr Ewart she had made an excellent case and that the council must keep an open mind to new ideas. A funding and affordability paper covering the "likely promoter, funding route, local contribution challenge, development funding requirement and key dependencies" is one of the seven recommendations cabinet approved. It has yet to be written, and what it contains may matter as much as the transport modelling. ## The bottom line Suffolk has been here before. What may be different this time is that, for all the insistence that Westminster must pay, a new crossing – be it over or under land – it is the kind of asset that can charge drivers for using it; and an asset that earns money is one private capital takes an interest in – especially in the context of a proposed takeover of the Port of Felixstowe. That possibility appears nowhere in the council's report, but it is one that the council is known to be exploring, and one that we will report on in more detail in the coming weeks. --- **Don't forget:** If you enjoy our content, please [add Ipswich.co.uk as a "preferred source" on Google](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=ipswich.co.uk&ref=ipswich.co.uk) so you can easily find more of the content you value. [Add as a preferred source on Google](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=ipswich.co.uk&ref=ipswich.co.uk) --- ### This article cost us \~£196 to produce It's free for you to read thanks to the generous support of our partners. Please support us by supporting them.