A VOTE has been called by a residents association on controversial plans to build a two-metre seawall across Shoebury Common.

Shoebury Residents’ Association will vote on its official position over Southend Council’s £4.6million plans at its annual general meeting tonight.

The vote comes as association committee members blasted Shoebury’s Tory ward councillors after they sent a questionnaire to residents in the area asking if they agreed there was a flood risk and that doing nothing is not an option.

The leaflet claims some residents felt too intimidated to ask questions during a public consultation, which finished on May 12.

But it has prompted anger from committee member John Budge. He said: “We have heard from several local residents who are absolutely furious about what they see as this cavalier action by the council on an issue that is highly controversial to say the least.

“As a result of this action the Shoeburyness Residents’ Association has been asked to take a public vote about the various schemes at its AGM.

“As was quoted by one of your writers a few weeks ago, yet again the view is ‘it stinks’.”

The questionnaire produced by councillors Derek Jarvis, Tony Cox and Roger Hadley, also asks residents for their opinion on three suggested flood defence schemes put forward by the council and an alternative put forward by anti-seawall campaigners the Friends of Shoebury Common.

The new questionnaire has prompted anger as some residents accused the Shoebury Conservatives of scaremongering after they sent out a previous leaflet depicting houses under water with the headline “your home could end up like this!” on the eve of a heated public meeting over the plans last month.

However, Mr Jarvis said the leaflet was just about local ward councillors gauging the opinion of their electorate.

He said: “What we are doing as local elected representatives, as we do every year, we go around out of the election times and find out what issues matter to our residents.

“This year we have started in the area of all those homes that will be flooded if the conditions that could prevail and did prevail when I was 14 in 1953 and a lot of water came over Shoebury Common.”

Shoebury Residents’ Association will hold its AGM at St Andrew’s Church Hall in Church Road, Shoebury, from 8pm.