More than £5,000 used for Colchester's city status bid would have been better spent on improving transport for the community, it has been claimed.

Colchester's bid - which is doomed according to a leaked Home Office document - should never have been made, said Colchester Conservative Association member David Vaughan.

Mr Vaughan, of Cheshunt Fields, Colchester, said the cash should have been spent developing an improved transport scheme.

He also said many people were proud of Colchester's status as the oldest town in Britain.

"I don't think there would be any advantage to being a city," he said.

"There are a lot of other towns which have a far better case."

No official decision has been made on which of the 39 towns which have made a bid will be chosen.

Submitting the bid cost £5,500, which included the design and printing of a booklet setting out Colchester's case and creating a website.

Colchester Council's bid was an 11th-hour decision and councillors voted two to one in favour of applying, leaving just six weeks to prepare.

Concerns were voiced at the time by Tory Jane Girdlestone (Prettygate) but Colchester MP Bob Russell, who backed the bid, said the application had been democratically agreed.

"It was the Conservatives who backed the motion in the first place!" he said.

Labour leader Tim Young said: "It's surprising the Conservatives are jumping on the bandwagon now it's doomed. We said from the start the money would be better spent on something else - like transport - but if they've now seen the light that's all well and good."

Colchester is the only one of the four towns known to have been Roman settlements which is not now a city.

Mayor Martin Hunt said: "We were a city in Roman times. As far as I'm concerned we still are."

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