Bridge Ward News » Wherstead Road

Wherstead Road Residents Association – New Officers

James Spencer — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:13:31 +0000

There have been a few changes to the Wherstead Road Residents Association. Fred Smy, who has done a wonderful job over the last few years and has been a strong voice for his community has stood down as chairman and Des Pawson, who has been very active in the noise action group, is the new chairman.

Wherstead Road Residents Association Meeting

James Spencer — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:11:24 +0000

There’s the Annual General Meeting of the Wherstead Road Residents Association. It’s tonight at the Orwell Yacht Club at 7.30. It’s members only.

Flood Defences, don’t sacrifice Wherstead Road or the Maidenhall Estate

James Spencer — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:56:04 +0000

The Evening Star is talking about the Shoreline Management Plan. This rather dry sounding document is vitally important to anyone who lives on Wherstead Road and, potentially the Maidenhall Estate and parts of Old Stoke.

It predicts that Wherstead Road is going to have to close down more frequently due to flooding. Which rather begs the question as to why the Labour Party has always opposed a relief road. Hopefully they’ll stop that now that Bridge is no longer a safe Labour seat. Let’s hope in this case that Wherstead Road is not once again sacrificed as a sure fire electoral bet for Labour to be sacrificed for more marginal wards.

I’ll be back on this later, but it is important for anyone in this part of Ipswich that we keep on top of this, even those of us who live on high ground as we’ll be regularly cut off without some real action.

In the meantime the relevant part of the Shoreline Management Plan is here (it’s in PDF format so you may need to download Adobe) :

https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/portal/re/flood/anglian/smp150310/consult?pointId=1267547879064

HG Clarke Gardens

James Spencer — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:44:26 +0000

Here’s an interesting piece of local colour about the Garden at the top of Wherstead Road, near Peppercorn Way. They’re called the HG Clarke Gardens, and although I live about five minutes away I never remember the nam. Hat tip to Comrade Ross (I credit my stories, unlike a certain councillor who copies the Tory candidate without accreditation – a very ineffective way to rebut this).

UPDATE: This in from Alasdair Ross:

Thanks for the link to the story abot the Herbert Clarke Gardens, I do read Ben’s website but did not see hisstory on the Bacon Loop or correct name Cord (as used by Ben) I got the story from a friend who works fr Network Rail and then got further details from Clrr Smart, so sorry did not borrow from Ben.

Ben Gummer in Wherstead Road

James Spencer — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:37:25 +0000

It’s election time, you can’t really escape politicians at the moment, at least I can’t.

The one particular politician that I can’t shake off is Ben Gummer. And as luck would have it he’ll be at Wherstead Road (the top end) at the The Shipwrights Arms, near the Starfish chip sjop, Colwill’s butcher and the Jorna restaurant. If you’re one of the many people who’ve walked into the Shipwrights Arms when it was a closed social club (like I did about three years ago) then you’ll be glad to know that it is now a public bar. For those with a Sat Nav its postcode is IP2 8JJ and the full address is 55-61 Wherstead Road.

He’ll be canvassing beforehand, so although it says he’ll be there for 8pm, expect him to be about ten minutes late.

Route 66: We need collaboration

James Spencer — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:33:57 +0000

Dame Bryony Rudkin (it’s a matter of time, mark my words, so we better start using the title now) has been blessing us with her representative skills at the council and asked about the Wherstead Road route.

On a serious note we should not simply be asking why the route shut down, Suffolk will say it’s revenue and First said on Monday – I was there - that it was revenue AND punctuality. The latter makes it harder to entice them back as they are getting crucified on punctuality at the moment.

Most people are quite aware that as long as the country is effectively bankrupt we won’t get any subsidy for the route. What we need is collaboration to evenly space out the routes, which will mean that the residents of Wherstead Road will have a reasonably spaced bus service and the companies will have profitable routes. Sadly the European Commission has (surprise, surprise) totally inappropriate competition rules – and so this will need Suffolk County Council to act as an honest broker to see if we can get a simlar result as Oxford had. This is the issue

When I was looking for a new house I looked at some on Wherstead Road. I would not have a bus from the station for two hours during the evening rush hour.

European Competition policy on the buses is another round of bus regulation. It would be uncontroversial to deregulate this on the Wherstead Road.

Bob Blastock, we need more like him

James Spencer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:40:55 +0000

Bob Blastock is one of the people that you see everywhere. I first met him about five years ago when I went to a meeting of the Over Stoke history group. I wasn’t really that active in local politics at the time, confining myself to delivering a few leaflets and so I didn’t get to many Residents’ Association meeting or Area forum meetings. Since getting involved I’ve seen Bob at Wherstead Road Residents Association meetings, talking about local history in St Mary’s at Stoke, doing his bit about the cement ship noise, meeting with Malcolm Robson about the bus service, well just about anything.

He used to be a very active member of the Labour Party, although that’s trailed off (as with many people in Bridge) and he’s one of the people who keeps the life of the ward moving along. We need more like him

He’s now retired formally from the Wherstead Road Residents Association, but I’m fairly sure we’ve not ssen the last of him.

Wherstead Road needs a decent crossing

James Spencer — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:11:26 +0000

I was at the Wherstead Road Residents Association reporting the committee on what I’ve been doing on the buses and the noise yesterday and having almost got run over crossing the road it seems clear that the road needs a crossing.

This is something that the committee are clear on, in fact the Association has been requesting that since the 1970s (they’re not quitters). This could, if sited in the right part of the road also slow down the traffic and discourage the lorries that Ipswich Council when under the Labour party encouraged when they stopped the roads being built for the east bank.

The tragedy is that if Bridge was a ward that was marginal when the council were looking at the decision then the interests of the ward would not have been so cavalierly overlooked. There are only three people who benefit from Bridge being a safe ward, the councillors, and two of them don’t even like Bridge enough to live in it.

A step towards decent buses on Wherstead Road

James Spencer — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:06:23 +0000

A pioneering agreement in Oxford may be able to offer hope to people on Wherstead Road. Wherstead Road is plagued by sporadic bus services, which would be far more tolerable if they were properly spaced out. Under typically stupid European Union rules this cannot be changed because there are a number of different operators on the route they cannot get together to redraw the timetable to space out their bus times, the authorities prefering that they bunched up their services to make them “competitive”. Why Europe needs to get involved in bus services that don’t even cross a county border, let alone an international border, is typically left unexplained.

This has meant that there is an almost two hour gap between buses in the evening on the route out of the town centre, and this starts almost exactly when the first commuter train comes in from London. Thanks Brussels.

Oxford has moved to stop their version of this needless, mandated competitive inefficiency by getting an agreement between the bus operating companies. Hopefully we won’t have some European under-secretary for buses deciding that this won’t work.

In fact the minister who could decide on this would be Chris Mole. I know that he doesn’t keep an eye on local media any more, but a couple of his tax paid staff do (even this humble site), so perhaps they can pass on the message that if he blocks the Oxford deal it will play badly on the Wherstead Road. We’ll make sure of it.

The cement ship is in port

James Spencer — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:54:11 +0000

The cement ship has been spotted in port, coming in this morning. I noticed a hum at Belstead Avenue at 6.40 in the morning, but it wasn’t that intrusive.
If anyone else notices the hum, or doesn’t notice it, then it would be appreciated if you can let us know. This is going to be a test case for the actions of Southern Cement and the Port of Ipsiwich.

We hope to give a more full account of the port focus group in the near future. We have managed to get Peter Evans, one of the founders of the Noise Action group, appointed to the Port Liaison group. Southern Cement have also fitted a silencer on their unloading machinery. While welcoming this we want to see if the recent quiet spell is due to the silencer or the fact that winter seems to have dampened the noise.

To get on to the Noise Action Group newsletter simply email noise@bridgeward.org.uk