COLCHESTER is a vibrant town, a popular place to live and work.

People who grew up here want to stay, others who didn’t want to move here.

And that is all well and good.

But there comes a time when enough is enough and that time is fast approaching.

Data released by the business lending firm BLEND Network, the town’s population grew by 9.5 per cent between 2011 and 2017, an increase of roughly 16,600 people.

That compares to a population growth of 4.6 per cent in neighbouring Tendring and only three per cent in the Braintree district.

Housebuilding has also increased to keep pace with the population boom but where will it all end?

The roads are too congested despite Essex County Council’s best efforts to make they run more freely.

Colchester Hospital is besieged, now in summer as well as winter.

New schools are appearing annually as the council desperately tries to stay one step ahead to enable it to fulfil its statutory duty to ensure all children are educated.

If housebuilding carries on at the same pace with infrastructure trailing behind the town will, quite simply, seize up.

And then far from being an attractive place to live, it will become a no go area with house hunters looking elsewhere.

The time has come for someone to say to the Government it must reassess its expectations for Colchester’s growth.

Otherwise it will simply be sharpening the knife to kill the goose which laid the golden egg.