Ipswich council leader on Rachel Reeves visit to Suffolk

Reeves has fond memories of Ipswich, having won a British under-14 girls chess championship title here. I’m sure that experience helped sharpen her mind for the task of managing the British economy.

I did talk to her about Business Rates, and I was pleased that changes to both small businesses and High-Street businesses rates are on the agenda for a new Labour government.

While we are talking about business rates, there are two things that the council can’t do, but are often asked to do.

The first is to lower business rates. The level of business rates is not something that Ipswich Borough Council (IBC) has any control over. They are set nationally by the government.

However, because IBC is responsible for collecting the money and businesses receive bills from IBC, many people think we set the rates too. IBC just collect the money and hand it straight over to the government.

Rachel Reeves toured East Anglia last week (Image: Ipswich Labour)

The second request is for the council to reduce the rents of commercial properties. Again, this is something that we have little or no control over. We can only set rents for the properties we own and the vast majority of properties in the town centre are owned by private landlords. They are free to charge rent at whatever level they want, and the Council cannot tell them what to charge.

I did have a longer and wider ranging discussion with Spencer Livermore, part of Reeves’ team, with the catchy job title of Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.

I had a long discussion around town centre regeneration, including compulsory purchase powers, brownfield developments and business rates.

Reeves and her team toured East Anglia over a couple of days. Starting in Norwich, she announced Labour would cut household energy bills by insulating five million homes over the next five years and said that a future Labour government would create almost 40,000 new jobs for the East of England.

There was a round table discussion with Suffolk Chamber of Commerce, as well as the business leaders’ event in Ipswich, where there was praise for the “realistic promises” on offer.

After staying over in an Ipswich Hotel, the team visited to the Port of Lowestoft and Scroby Sands wind farm in Great Yarmouth.

This was about promoting Labour's Green Prosperity plans which will provide high quality jobs in the green energy sector, at the same time as helping to lower people's energy bills and helping tackle global warming.

We need to bring some of those jobs to Ipswich. It’s great to see the Net Zero centre at Suffolk New College, which is already training people for the future.

The Ipswich event was pulled together by Jack Abbott, who will be Labour’s candidate in the General Election.

He wanted to showcase the depth and breadth of talent in our town and brought over 100 business and community leaders together at a prominent central location. I can’t remember when the Labour Party last held a business leaders’ event at this scale in Ipswich. A real statement of his intent and ambition for our town.

I’ll leave the last word to Rachel Reeves, the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"The key thing that voters are saying to me is that nothing is working today," she said. "People know it's time for change and are looking again at Labour."