East Suffolk Council
Customer Services centre to relocate
East Suffolk Council’s face-to-face customer services facility will relocate later this month, moving temporarily to the Council’s Riverside offices before moving permanently to Lowestoft Library at the end of the year.
Earlier this year, East Suffolk’s Cabinet agreed to relocate the Council’s customer services facility from the Marina Centre in Lowestoft as part of plans to transform an area of the town centre into a thriving Cultural Quarter.
From Monday 23 September, the Council’s Customer Services reception will be open five days a week at Riverside (4 Canning Road, NR33 0EQ). Additionally, to ensure a Customer Services presence remains in the town centre, a limited service will also be available at Lowestoft Library on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, from Tuesday 24 September.
Customer Services at Riverside will be open for face-to-face visits from 9am-5pm Monday to Friday. The desk at Lowestoft Library will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays (9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm) and on Wednesdays (9am to 1pm).
For those not requiring in person support, the Customer Services team are available on the phone (0333 016 2000) on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays (8:45am - 5pm) and Thursdays (9:30am - 5pm).
Customers can also access a range of Council services quickly and easily online. This includes reporting a missed bin, making a payment and checking a planning application.
Cllr Paul Ashton, East Suffolk’s cabinet member for Assets and Corporate Services, said: “Whilst we need to vacate the Marina to make way for the Cultural Quarter development, we are not yet able to move completely into the library and so we will offer customers our usual full range of services from Riverside on a temporary basis, with an additional, smaller, presence at the library to ensure we retain a presence in the town centre.
“We will be offering an enhanced service at Riverside, with the Customer Services desk open between 9am and 5pm every weekday, compared to the current three day opening at the Marina Centre. The smaller service at the library will also be available for three days each week and this arrangement will continue until we are able to move fully into the library, which is scheduled to take place by the end of the year.”
Customer service desks are also available within libraries in Aldeburgh, Felixstowe, Halesworth, Leiston, Saxmundham and Woodbridge. Pre-bookable appointments are available for all locations, and customers can contact the Customer Service team on 0333 016 2000 for advice and to book an appointment.
The entire Customer Services facility will move permanently to Lowestoft Library in December 2024.
The Marina Centre will close to the public on Thursday 19 September.
Suffolk County Council’s Youth Justice and Leaving Care teams will also be relocated from the Marina and will be based at Riverside from Monday 23 September.
The Cultural Quarter is one of five major transformational regeneration projects made possible by a successful application for £24.9m from the Government’s Towns Fund in 2020. This major project will see redevelopment of the Marina Centre and former Battery Green multi-storey car park into a new cultural and community hub, with studio space for creative businesses, a leisure complex and restaurant.
Work to partially demolish the former Battery Green multi-storey car park began in July. The demolition work, which is being carried out by Harte Demolitions Ltd, is scheduled for completion at the end of September.