UP TO £500,000 is to be ploughed into making Ipswich a university town.Last week The Evening Star revealed the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) had given the green light to the project which would see campuses built throughout Suffolk.

UP TO £500,000 is to be ploughed into making Ipswich a university town.

Last week The Evening Star revealed the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) had given the green light to the project which would see campuses built throughout Suffolk.

And now that support has been backed up with £245,000, which is set to be boosted by equal funding from all the partners in the bid.

Project leaders the Universities of Essex and East Anglia will now have roughly £500,000 to work with to create the best bid possible when it goes before the treasury - probably some time in July.

Ipswich Borough Council chief executive James Hehir was thrilled with the latest development in the long-running saga to secure a university for Suffolk.

He said: "We're all working very hard on the business plan to bring it forward and this must give us an even better chance.

"We're all feeling good. This is the most important piece of work coming up. The whole project is really going to lift."

The main campus is set to be the heart of an Ipswich university quarter, linking the waterfront redevelopment, Suffolk College buildings and the county council's St Helen's Street base.

Detailed plans are already being worked on and Mr Hehir promised a radical look which would completely transform a huge section of the town.

Ipswich MP Chris Mole met HEFCE chairman Sir Howard Newby in London yesterday. And he was delighted with the outcome.

He said: "HEFCE would not be sanctioning the spending of a quarter of a million pounds on employing consultants unless it was pretty serious and excited about building a university for the county."

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