University set for go-ahead

CIVIC leaders are today expected to give the go-ahead to build a £20million building on Ipswich Waterfront as part of Suffolk's first university. Ipswich Borough Council's planning and development committee is expected to approve plans for the seven storey University Campus Suffolk (UCS) building due to be built on Orwell Quay.

CIVIC leaders are today expected to give the go-ahead to build a £20million building on Ipswich Waterfront as part of Suffolk's first university.

Ipswich Borough Council's planning and development committee is expected to approve plans for the seven storey University Campus Suffolk (UCS) building due to be built on Orwell Quay.

UCS business and operations manager Carol Macaskill said: “We feel confident we have provided the committee with all the information its needs to ensure a favourable response.

“A positive decision will mean a huge leap forward for University Campus Suffolk. By February we hope to be on site and people will begin to see the first tangible signs of the UCS development.”

The plans, which would see the demolition of 130 Fore Street, have provoked protest among residents of the neighbouring 10-storey Neptune Marina apartment block.

The residents claim the building is an “overdevelopment” of the site, is too tall and too close to the apartments. They have also claimed they were assured no structure taller than three-storeys would be built on the land when they purchased their homes.

But these concerns have been rejected by council officers, who say the loss of view is “not a valid planning consideration”.

They have recommended windows above the first floor are obscured to avoid the potential for Neptune Marina to be overlooked.

A council report said: “The proposals will contribute massively to the ongoing regeneration of the waterfront and be a catalyst for further investment in the education quarter and elsewhere.”

THE UCS building, which will be an integral part of the Ipswich education quarter, will include a student centre, teaching space, classrooms, lecture theatres, offices, a café, retail space and computer rooms.

What do you think of the UCS development? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN or send us an e-mail to eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk

UCS In Profile>

University Campus Suffolk (UCS) is due to open its doors to students in September 2007.

Costing and estimated £150million over the next ten years UCS, land has already been set aside for the project and UCS, plus a new Suffolk College, will create an 'education quarter' stretching from Rope Walk to the Ipswich Waterfront.

A partnership lead by the universities of East Anglia and Essex, the UCS project is supported by Suffolk County Council, Ipswich Borough Council and the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).

Expected to be worth £1 million a week to the Ipswich economy, UCS will include the Ipswich campus and a number of linked centres in other Suffolk towns. This county-wide campus will be known as the Suffolk Learning Centres.

Weblinks www.suffolk.ac.uk www.ucs.ac.uk

January 2007 archaeological investigations expected to begin on UCS site.

February 2007 piling begins on UCS site at Orwell Quay on Ipswich Waterfront.

August 2007 hand over of Higher Education Suffolk College students and staff to UCS.

September 2007 first students to start UCS courses.

Autumn 2008-Planned opening of first UCS building on Ipswich Waterfront.