Elmstead Parish Council public statement regarding the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community released 3rd April 2025

We’d like to thank Sir Bernard Jenkin MP for continuing to pursue the issues we raised last year regarding the lack of a functional infrastructure first policy for the new Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community. We will continue to work with local MPs on this vital issue.
Our stance remains absolute – no residential development should take place until the link road is fully operational.
To allow thousands of homes to be occupied, as well as vast amounts of construction traffic, with no connections to the wider highway network would be catastrophic for the local road system.
It would cause dangerous levels of excessive traffic on small country roads with junctions that cannot support the volume of vehicles. It would have a severe economic impact on any local business reliant on vehicular access (which in a rural setting is the vast majority of businesses), and will cause endless congestion harmful to local communities and residents.
We’d like to reiterate that for years throughout the planning and consultation process we were guaranteed by representatives of both Tendring and Essex Councils that the link road would be built in one phase, and be functional before any building was allowed. This would ensure that construction traffic would not need to use local roads, by only using the A120 for site access. At this time it was recognized by the District/County councils that traffic alone would be highly detrimental to local roads and communities.
Now these promises have been broken at the first possible hurdle, and we are deeply concerned with the supposed reassurance that the wider ‘infrastructure first’ principle will still be complied with. Public services such as local schools and healthcare are already near breaking point, but the current proposals would still allow over a thousand homes to be built before any more infrastructure is operational.
Last May we raised concerns at the public hearings that despite a self-imposed initial target of 15% return on investment, the project’s own financial report estimated it to be under 10%, which will have since fallen further.
Every new home in the garden community is going to be burdened with the additional cost of tens of thousands of pounds to contribute towards additional infrastructure – and whoever buys these homes would have to do so knowing that infrastructure may not be in place for many years to come.
Our greatest concern at this time is that an initial development of thousands of houses may be built with minimal infrastructure before local authorities accept the overall scheme is not viable in its current state.
The garden community scheme overall has already consumed countless man hours of local and county council staff, and while the first phase of the A1331 has been funded by a central government grant – this is still ultimately spending taxpayer money to enable private development.
If the project continues on its current trajectory, it seems inevitable that a massive shortfall in infrastructure funding will have to be paid for by local taxpayers across Tendring and Colchester, or risk an influx of additional pressure on already struggling local services.
The scheme is becoming a black hole of public resources, and for every query we have answered about the way forward, a dozen more arise with any response being unrealistic optimism.
We would suggest that with the current state of affairs it is irresponsible for Tendring and Colchester Councils to proceed until there is guaranteed certainty that the link road will be complete and operational before any development is occupied.
Elmstead Parish Council remains committed to ensuring that if the garden community development proceeds, we will seek the best outcome for the local community.