Many people were pleased when the former leader of Colchester Council was ousted at the local elections.

His property developer tendencies have left Colchester with a legacy of endless estates and a big increase in the built environment, but little new infrastructure.

That legacy is delaying decisions on the A12 upgrade, with the suggestion of re-routing the road in a loop around Marks Tey, in an attempt to add thousands more properties to the deeply unpopular proposal for a huge new town at West Tey.

That leads on to considering the upgrading of the A120 from Braintree to the A12 and in that context, it was interesting to read last week’s letter from Jonathan Dixon Smith.

Jonathan was promoting routes B and C for the A120 on the grounds that, despite being longer than routes D and E, they would use less valuable agricultural land.

Apart from disclosing land ownership interests along most of these routes, he failed to mention the much greater area of valuable agricultural land that would be lost if West Tey is approved by the planning inspector.

The important issue to keep in focus is that for decades the Colchester and North Essex area has been starved of infrastructure investment and therefore anything that delays tackling the dangerous, over-capacity A12 and A120 is to be deplored.

Essex County Council has announced the decision on the chosen A120 route and its decision should be welcomed.

Once that moves ahead, perhaps attention can be given to our overstretched hospital and railway services.

By Noel Mead of Broad Green, Coggeshall