A CAMPAIGN group is urging residents across the borough to tell Basildon Council they don’t want hundreds of extra flats crammed into their town centres.

Members of Wickford Action Group warned the £125million Wickford Masterplan left the town with hundreds of flats, but little improvements to shopping, leisure and health facilities.

The planning blueprint, which was first dreamed up in 2005, had to be shelved five years later by Basildon Council because of problems with finding a suitable private developer to build a new street market, health centre, community centre with library, and swimming pool.

Tory council leaders hope the masterplan will be completed and argued plans announced last week for a new Sainsbury’s and petrol station on the site of the Co-op store, off the High Street, could attract investment.

But Action Group members urged residents in other areas facing similar masterplans, such as Pitsea, Laindon, and Basildon, to take notice of their bad experience and oppose housing development plans.

John Rushton, from the Action Group, said: “The council is asking for residents’ views on future development. It may be a good time to remind people of our experiences of the project in Wickford, which has not ended well.

“We’ve been left with 135 flats in four multi-storey blocks, including a monstrous seven- storey block near the old post office, and two building sites empty for four years. But there are no extra doctors, dentists, or school places.”

Council leader Tony Ball hit back. He said: “It can't have escaped the group’s notice we have suffered the worst economic recession in living memory and town centres schemes up and down the country are failing.

“We need private investment, as has happened in Basildon and Pitsea, to regenerate Wickford, and it is up to all of us to create the conditions that will attract this investment. Now is not the time for negativity.”