Campaigner takes fight to ombudsman

DEDICATED campaigner Janet Osborne has asked the ombudsman to take action against Suffolk because of the state of Ipswich bus station.

Miss Osborne, of Pearsons Way in Copdock, wrote to the county council demanding that seats should be improved at the bus station at the Old Cattle Market.

She has been incensed that the county is proposing to spend £200,000 on Haverhill bus station and nothing is immediately proposed in Ipswich.

She said the seats at Ipswich - designed to allow passengers to “perch” while waiting for a bus are not suitable for pensioners who are among the heaviest users of buses.

She said: “If you have to use them for any length of time they can be agonisingly painful, when buses are late quite often Ipswich bus station is not the place to be.”

Ms Osborne has written to Suffolk chief executive Andrea Hill about the seats, and has raised the question of her £220,000 salary in her letter to the ombudsman.

She wants the ombudsman to tell the council to improve the station which services buses from outside the town.

Mrs Hill told her that the council was currently preparing a bid for a comprehensive new public transport scheme for Ipswich, and the future of the bus station would be included in this.

A spokeswoman for the county council said the style of seats in the bus station were quite common - they were designed to dissuade vagrants or rowdy youths from congregating there.

She said: “With traditional seats or benches you can get people spending a long time there. They are designed to allow people to rest for a few minutes before they get on to their bus, nothing more.”