Suffolk Chamber of Commerce’s recent report, Broken Down: the economic impact of the A14 in Suffolk, evidenced the negative consequences of closures and delays along this vital roadway on both current business operations and on companies’ future investment and jobs creation plans.

In the case of the current maintenance work being carried out by National Highways to replace two expansion joints on the Orwell Bridge, Suffolk Chamber understands the rationale and investment being undertaken and applauds the organisation’s improved communications to users.

However, Suffolk Chamber believes that the current situation produced by this maintenance work proves once again that a pragmatic programme of improvements to the A14 is now a critical national priority. No options should be ruled out, binary debates should be avoided as they may result in funding opportunities being overlooked for intermediate improvements and progress should be made in advancing research into all possible solutions as those become available.

The Broken Down report made a number of short and long-term recommendations as to how these impacts could be further reduced and better managed in future.

One of these was to persuade National Highways to commit to implementing two of the recommendations contained within the Broken Down report; namely investing in an automated messaging service, such as WhatsApp, to provide real-time alerts and updates to all drivers using the Orwell Bridge and agreeing to deploy its own traffic incident staff to assist the police in more speedily clearing accidents or breakdowns either side of the Bridge from the Copdock Interchange to the Seven Hills Roundabout.

Suffolk Chamber is repeating its call for a Government Taskforce to be established to bring together businesses, local government leaders and the county’s MPs to explore options for adding capacity to the regional roads network around Ipswich and in and out of Felixstowe that goes beyond any individual issue and which rules no solution out at this stage.

As non-party political organisation, we stand ready to do the required heavy-lifting and bring together local, regional and national stakeholders from across the business and political spectrum in a manner similar to the highly successful Suffolk Convention summit last year to work with the Government on this nationally significant issue.

Policy principles and approach

• Doing nothing about the A14 across Suffolk but especially around Ipswich is not an option. As shown by the Chamber’s recent report – Broken Down – there are both immediate and future costs in terms of business activity, investment and jobs
  
  
• Suffolk Chamber believes that no viable option that minimises delays and disruptions should be ruled out and each should be investigated and worked up as soon as possible
  
  
• We have set out a number of these short, medium and long-term solutions in the seven-point programme in the Broken Down report
  
  
• Suffolk Chamber is directly leading on some of the immediate ones (e.g. convening a research group to evaluate the national economic impact of A14 delays in order to gain the sustained attention of Government departments, lobbying directly to Nick Harris, CE of National Highways about his traffic officers being deployed to speed up accident clearances, diversion route implementations etc.) and working with MPs of all parties on others
  
  
• The key political imperative for the Suffolk system is, we believe, to avoid getting too trapped into any binary long-term choices that result in a. nothing being done to advance the short and medium-term improvements as everything comes to rely on one long-term single solution and b. relationship capital being expended and a clear Suffolk voice being harder to deliver as a result on other infrastructure campaigns
  
  
• Therefore, in the specific case of the Ipswich Northern Route (for which the three initial proposals from Suffolk County Council are now at least five years out of date), Suffolk Chamber supports calls for investigations into options to be worked up asap – certainly well ahead of the new Mayoral Combined Authority and Suffolk unitary authorities being fully operational from May 2028
  
  
• At the same time, as per recommendation seven in Broken Down, we believe that Government should join a taskforce that brings together all key local, regional and national stakeholders
  
  
• Suffolk Chamber stands ready to help convene just such a summit of local, regional and national stakeholders from across the business and political spectrum in a manner similar to the highly successful Suffolk Convention summit last year – which is being repeated in October.