TORY councillors are prepared to back plans for a new town on Colchester’s border with Tendring, but not the proposed 16,858 home settlement at West Tey.

Plans to set up delivery vehicles for proposed garden communities are due to be discussed at a full Colchester Council meeting tonight, after Cabinet members recommended them for approval last week.

Conservative members say they will back the new 6,608-home town to the east of Colchester, but believe alternatives are available to the site on the border with Braintree.

The new towns would see infrastructure including roads, medical facilities and schools built before housing.

Conservative group leader Dennis Willetts said the Tendring border plans were more robust because of the jobs which can be provided at Essex University and the Knowledge Gateway and the provision for open space around the new towns.

He said: “We support a vision of sustainable garden communities in which strategic transport infrastructure will be provided before any housing development is completed.

“These requirements can certainly be achieved in a Colchester-Tendring border garden community

“The position is very different for a Colchester-Braintree borders garden community.

“This over-optimistic proposal would see high-density housing extending continuously from Stanway to Coggeshall, breaching the garden concept, with a weak economic case, grossly insufficient local jobs resulting in dormitory houses for commuters to London and other centres of actual employment.”

The Conservative group will recommend limited expansion in Marks Tey and development on brownfield sites including Middlewick Ranges.

The garden settlement plans would see homes built steadily over the next five decades and last week Colchester Council leader Paul Smith (Lib Dem) told the Gazette they were the best way forward as councils would be able to lead the projects, rather than developers.

Mr Smith said it was the only way to ensure sufficient infrastructure was provided along with new homes.