Campaigners fighting to get a controvercial fence taken down will not get help from a district council.

The two-metre high fence was put up at Allen’s Quay, Mistley, in September.

Quay owner Trent Wharfage put the fence up for health and safety reasons, it said.

But residents said the fence was spoiling the view and hampering rescue access from the quay.

They formed the Free the Quay group to protest against it.

District councillors Sarah Candy and Carlo Guglielmi put forward a motion to Tuesday’s Tendring Council meeting, asking the Tendring Council to take whatever action was in its power, “both as the local planning authority and also as a community leader” to seek the removal of the fence.

Mrs Candy urged councillors to pull together for residents living near Mistley quay and all those who use it.

She said: “We are not asking this council to go beyond its power.”

But council leader David Lines, who has offered to mediate talks between protestors and quay owner Trent Wharfage, said the council should not support the motion and should wait to see how talks go.

He said he now had responses from Mistley Parish Council chairman Ian Rose, Simon Bullimore of protest group Free the Quay, and Trent Wharfage and that dialogue was set to continue.

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