JUST 7 per cent of garden community residents will commute to London from Colchester, it has been claimed.

A Colchester Council officer explained 60 per cent of residents would work in the town, while of the remaining 40 per cent, just 7 per cent would travel to the capital, in line with existing commuting to London.

It was claimed outside of the borough, most people are travelling to Braintree, Chelmsford and Tendring.

But cynical councillors, at the first Local Plan meeting since the public consultation closed this summer, disputed several key figures which emerged from transport and employment documents.

Andrew Ellis (Con) said: “Making the assumption 7 per cent of the garden communities in West Tey will be commuters, I think is not realistic or honest.

“Why build a community on a mainline to London if you think they’re all going to be working in that community?

“And what we haven’t got anywhere, is what the drivers for the jobs are?

“What are we, as a local authority, doing to bring the sorts of jobs to that area that will enable people to buy the houses we’re going to be building?

“Colchester is a low wage economy so how are the people going to buy houses which are selling at a 10 per cent premium to the market?”

The figures derived from the 2011 Census data which were then applied to the garden communities, the meeting was told.

Ian Vipond, Colchester Council’s strategic director of policy and place, added Colchester has been good at generating jobs and is expecting growth in a number of industries including health.

But commuting will still take place.

He said trends suggest firms are creating offices outside of the capital to save money so “being on the mainline is attractive for creating jobs from London and not just to London” for which there is capacity on the train line.

Projections also indicate 18.75 per cent of jobs which arise from the borough’s two garden communities will be home working.

However, Conservative MP Will Quince described this as “pure fantasy” and councillor Lewis Barber (Con) called it a “striking figure”.

He said: “It’s way above the national average percentage currently working from home.

“The highest percentage regionally is the south west I believe at 17 per cent.

“When we’re talking about a community of up to 29,000, the percentage equals a substantial amount of people.

“The figure isn’t on the trajectory - it’s just plain and factually wrong.”

But after recalling Census and Office of National Statistics data, which reported home working at 13.9 per cent in Colchester in 2014, Colchester Council’s transportation policy manager, Paul Wilkinson, said the town would hit the 18.75 mark comfortably by 2022.