ELECTIONS are ordinarily a time for disagreeing, even if it’s just for the sake of it.

Your party might not have a particularly strong view on a subject, like music in car parks (a Tory idea), a youth summit (one from the Lib Dems) or appointing a director of wellbeing (in Labour’s manifesto), but you will regard what the opposition thinks with suspicion and disdain.

But there is on thing all of Colchester’s main parties agree on: taking back a level of control from Essex County Council.

Labour talk of “releasing us from the shackles of Essex County Council”.

The Lib Dems are similarly forthright and simply say: “We need a divorce.”

And, yes, even the Conservative borough council manifesto advocates an element of devolution, albeit in slightly more careful language, saying: “Taking back control from Essex Highways of minor street repairs, furniture and signage within the historic old town and non-parished areas.”

The feeling the borough council could do a better job of looking after Colchester’s roads, to a varying extent, is not up for debate.

Could a borough council-run highways department really have completed the Ipswich Road/Harwich Road roundabout scheme more quickly and more cheaply than County Hall?

In reality, probably not.

But it appears an increasing number of residents, and councillors, want more power closer to home, where the people making decisions live on, use and feel the streets.