Ipswich’s public projects must move from delay to delivery
Arras Square got the go-ahead six years ago. Work was meant to start in June. Nearly seven weeks on, it's underway – but barely. If this is what progress looks like, our town centre should be worried, argues Ipswich.co.uk staff writer Nicola Sebastian.
I was once on public transport passing Canary Wharf in London, back in 2023, when someone beside me said: "You can tell a place is getting investment by the number of cranes it has."
Ipswich doesn't need any cranes just yet, but you can usually tell something is moving along in the town centre when you're deafened by digging in the ground. I walk past Arras Square, Monday to Friday, and have never known that part of our town centre to reach such a low frequency of noise.
Six years in the making
For context, Arras Square received planning approval six years ago. Since then, the project has consumed public money through planning, administration and design costs. It was put on hold in 2022 after Suffolk Police raised concerns about safety.
Nicola Sebastian
An FOI response obtained by Ipswich.co.uk put the cost of Arras Square at £313,689.08 spent since 2020, before a single paving slab had been relaid.
Work on Arras Square was supposed to begin in earnest by the end of June this year, and by now, it was meant to be eagerly underway. There's a particular joy in walking past an active building site in summer — the buzz of workers, the pull to peer through the metal gates, the sense that something is about to become something else.
We're now seven weeks into the building process and, at least to the naked eye, progress has been limited.
Diggers are on site, the ground has been dug up, and a mess has been made. Virtually nothing has changed in the seven weeks since work began — except that it looks as if someone went underground and gave the whole area a good shake.
There's a beauty in seeing something torn apart before it's rebuilt. But if this project took six years just to begin, you'd expect the planning behind it to be meticulous enough not to waste a single further day. If the timeline for a few benches, a stretch of new pavement, a disabled ramp and some replacement trees runs past six months, something isn't adding up.
None of this is to say my own timekeeping — or lack of it — is an accurate measure of the work actually being carried out. However, I've yet to count more than two workers on site. This week, when walking past, both were occupied with their vices — rolling a cigarette, checking a phone. Not a problem, that's the art of the trade. But why only two?
Ipswich.co.uk asked Ipswich Borough Council for an update on timing. A spokesperson told us: "Nothing has changed since our last update. Works completed so far are in accordance with the agreed schedule, and we are on track for the completion date."
It's a reassurance you could take at face value, but it doesn't fully answer the question: why the gruelling six years, for another gruelling six months, for a project that will deliver fewer than six benches?
Not an outlier
Public realm projects rarely move quickly, and there are legitimate reasons for that — procurement rules, planning conditions, funding cycles, and genuine safety concerns like the ones raised in 2022. But in Ipswich we've seen a pattern emerge.
The greening project was promised as a magnificent oasis of greenery spreading across our town — every season was meant to bring new life to the planting. What's actually been delivered, not only took four to five year to complete, but it is also not what was originally promised. Lloyds Avenue was first proposed back in December 2020; an area with genuine potential, it has had funding sitting ready since 2021 — it was finally approved in April 2025, and more than a year on, still nobody can say when work will actually start.
Is this the pattern we want for our town, and is this the pattern we're happy to keep lending our goodwill to?
What residents are actually losing
What's different about Arras Square is what's actually being lost. It isn't only public money, though let's remember that administrative costs — officer time, committee reports, repeated consultations — are paid for out of public funds regardless of whether a project is ever finished. It's also residents' time and goodwill. At what point does that patience run out?
Broomhill Lido is a case in point. Its current planning permission is due to expire in December 2027. If work hasn't started by then, the process of renewing conditions and permissions will have to begin again — a further cost in time and money that a faster process could avoid.
Nicola Sebastian
Situations like these are always a case of what if. What if the council had pushed through planning applications on Broomhill quicker? What if work had started before Covid? What if one project hadn't been left to drag on while others were attended to promptly instead? What if, what if, what if.
None of this is to say every delay is avoidable, or that officers and contractors aren't working hard within a genuinely complex system.
But we cannot keep playing whack-a-mole with projects across the town centre — patching up one scheme while another stalls, and creating holes in the process. If planning permissions are expiring before spades go into the ground, if Section 106 conditions have to be reiterated because circumstances have moved on, and if contractors and funding windows keep slipping out of alignment, then questions need to be asked.
Seasons change, yes, but this is our town. Time seems to stand still where it shouldn't, and fly by in the very places where we need it to wait for us to catch up.
The bottom line
The council says Arras Square will be finished by Christmas, and residents are supposed to trust this to be the case, with just two workers visible on site seven weeks after building work was meant to be eagerly underway.
A project that takes six years to deliver a handful of benches, a pavement and a disabled ramp is not, on any reasonable reading, moving quickly enough.
Faster delivery isn't just about tidier streets – it's about re-establishing credibility, and knowing that when the council makes a commitment, it can deliver. It is also about ending the sight of our town centre languishing in a permanent stasis of hoardings, pedestrian diversions and incomplete streetscape works.
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