RESIDENTS frustrated at the lack of council publicity for plans to build as many as 5,000 new homes in Castle Point have sent out their own leaflets.

Only 10 per cent of Castle Point households were sent letters by the council about three public exhibitions.

The final exhibition was at Runnymede Hall, in Thundersley, but some residents only found out after notices were pushed through their door.

Lisa Chandler, 38, of Daws Heath Road, said: “We live right by where they want to build 550 homes off Daws Heath Road and we didn’t recieve a letter.

“We had a notice put through our door about the exhibition, but it wasn’t from the council. We don’t know who it was from.”

Another resident who received the tip off was Tony Reekie, 71, of Daws Heath Road. He said: “I think some of the residents from Fairmead Avenue sent them, but the council should have written to more people.”

Other residents heard of the exhibition from other people. Doreen Holdsworth, 71, of Marlin Close, Hadleigh, said: “We found out from the local shop. We haven’t received anything whatsoever from the council and I don’t think that’s acceptable.”

One man, who asked not to be named, said he had distributed around 60 notices.

He said: “If you have a set of unpopular proposals then no wonder you only inform 10 per cent of the population and publicise it in August when a lot of people are on holiday.”

Consultation to the proposals ends on Friday, but the council denied people were not deliberately being kept in the dark.

Ian Burchill, corporate director for the environment at the council, said: “We wrote to every tenth household.

“We couldn’t write to all 40,000 as it would have cost too much and we would have had staff stuffing envelopes for days.

“We knew people would talk to their neighbours and that more people would come to the exhibitions than those we wrote to.”