Winter sports complex project gets provisional green-light

Ambitious proposals for what would be one of the largest winter sports centres in Europe have successfully negotiated the first planning hurdle.

Mid Suffolk District Council has given the scheme, earmarked for a site at Great Blakenham near Ipswich, outline planning permission.

The development, which includes a leisure complex, a new railway station and over 400 new homes, has a price tag of more than £350m.

The developer, Onslow Suffolk, wants to locate the complex at a quarry which supplied clay and chalk for a former cement works.

In addition to an indoor ski slope and ice climbing wall, proposals include an ice skating rink, hotels, a golf course as well as shops and flats.

Council leader Tim Passmore said applications were approved on the basis of a wide range of mitigation measures and subject to a number of stringent conditions.

He stressed that the development would be "good for the economy of Suffolk as a whole".

He pledged that the council would work hard to ensure that "any adverse environmental impacts such as traffic movements, noise and light pollution are kept to an absolute minimum for all the local residents".

Because the proposals represent a departure from local planning policies the Deputy Prime Minister may yet decide, on the advice of the Government Office for the East, that it would be in the public interest to hold a public inquiry into the scheme.

Roger Milne

27 April 2006