Project Update - February 2025
East Suffolk Council’s master-planning process for a new leisure-led garden neighbourhood to the north of Felixstowe saw a year of engagement and consultation during 2024. The project team is now analysing the feedback and will update the masterplan accordingly.
The masterplan aims to satisfy the housing need as identified in the Local Plan, and provide a new leisure centre, associated community facilities, whilst protecting the natural environment and boosting biodiversity on the site. The existing sports pitches will be upgraded with a potential net gain of approximately 27 hectares of public open space. The idea of creating an overall masterplan for the site is to avoid piecemeal development and create a cohesive scheme which can deliver the key infrastructure required.
The engagement project was launched at a public meeting at the Orwell Hotel in February 2024, with more than 500 people listening to the presentation and inspecting information boards. On that occasion, the project team was joined by colleagues from Suffolk County Council’s education department and health care providers.
There followed a series of briefings through the remainder of the year. These included Councillor briefings (for parish, town, district, and county councillors), the creation of a Stakeholders’ Forum and a Citizens’ Panel who all met regularly to discuss the plans and hear from experts on a range of themes such as highways, planning and leisure. Residents were also kept up to date with a series of articles in residents’ magazines and on the website.
A second public event took place at Brackenbury Sports centre in August. This ‘drop in’ event gave residents and interested parties the opportunity to study 16 detailed information boards which addressed every aspect of the masterplan. On that occasion, more than 900 people came to engage with the project, council representatives and consultants.
Most recently, a ‘Question Time’ style event took place at Felixstowe School, attracting approximately 180 people, and more than 150 questions were submitted. These questions have now all been answered both individually and on our website.
Many interesting issues were raised during this consultation period. Our next steps are to gather all the feedback and adjust the masterplan accordingly. This is also the right time to review the governance of the project to ensure that both the community and councillors are involved and informed throughout the next stage of work.
Sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to this important debate. We have updated the project timeline on our website and will provide further updates once we have taken stock and are ready to take the project to the next phase.
Question and Answer Session - November 2024
In 'BBC Question Time' style event held at Felixstowe School with councillors, council project officers and consultants from the project team in attendance, attendees were given the opportunity to submit questions for discussion.
We were pleased to have in excess of 160 people attending the event, with over 150 questions received. Any questions which were not read out due to time limitation, in addition to those answered on the day, are now available to download view below:
Q&A panel responses
August Public Drop in Session
Please find the information that was produced for the public event.
Information Boards from August Public Event
More than 500 people responded to the anonymous survey which sought opinion on specific aspects of the draft masterplan. Please follow the link below to view the results – thank you to everyone who took part in the survey.
Anonymous Public Survey Results
Stakeholder Forum
The Stakeholder Forum will bring together various local, technical, industry and future user representatives. The objective of the Forum is - like a that of a town hall meeting - to provide an open line of communication enabling stakeholders to be kept up to date regarding North Felixstowe and ensuring the needs of communities are being considered.
Click below to download the minutes from the Stakeholder Forum.
Download the October 2024 minutes
Download the July 2024 minutes
Citizens' Panel
East Suffolk Council are forming a Citizens' Panel for residents to share ideas and views in a workshop series starting in January 2024, shaping a new neighbourhood to the north of Felixstowe. A Citizens Panel is a demographically representative group of local people that are brought together to learn about, deliberate on, and reach conclusions about what they think should happen. These workshops will explore issues around addressing climate change, community facilities, affordable housing, energy, and local employment. Participation will be remunerated to kind.
Click below to download the summary from each Citizens’ Panel Session.
Thematic Workshops
A series of public workshops are being planned for specific interest groups which will run alongside the citizens panel series. We are still developing the detail and timings of these, but potential themes include Sports and Leisure, Nature Recovery, Food Resilience, Affordable Housing and Arts and Culture. These workshops are likely to be hosted online, we will provide more detail here as it becomes available.