Admittedly the money has only been available since last month, but it is already turning out to be quite a soap opera and I fear we have only just started.

So far we have had councillors drawing up a list of ideas and asking two designers to incorporate them into a plan for a new-look Market Hill.
Those plans were rubbished by all and sundry and said designers were given the boot for failing to stick to the brief. Oh, and they were handed £3,000 of taxpayers' money for the work.

Now one of the councillors has come up with new plans for Market Hill which will be discussed in the next week or so.
No doubt, these plans will be given the once-over and the baton will then be handed to someone else who has not had a go yet at getting the pen and paper out. And so the saga will go on.

At some point – don't hold your breath – we might reach a stage where the council agrees a best way forward, designs are drawn up and then submitted to Babergh District Council for planning permission.
But the problem is Babergh might not like the plans and may throw them out. There is also a chance that Suffolk County Council's highways bods will not take to the plans and use their powers to block them, too. We just don't know.

And why don't we know? Because as far as I know, no one has asked them.
Surely the first thing that should have been done before drawing up plans was to invite officers from Babergh and Suffolk to a town council meeting to discuss these ideas.
The officers could then say what would work, what wouldn't and what doesn't fit in with other plans for the town centre. I don't like the phrase, but it is "joined-up" thinking and that is what we need.

That joined-up thinking should also include wide-ranging consultations with market traders, shop-owners, the chamber of commerce, the police and probably a stack of other groups that I can't think of at the minute.
Perhaps then we may get a good idea of what can be done to the Market Hill, what people want done and set about doing it.