2200 New Homes for Colchester

I went for a walk with Bob Russell, MP for Colchester, on New Year's Day, along with about 30 others. I was curious to see where the proposed housing was to be located in the Mile End area. It had seemed to be a crazy idea when I first heard about it, so I was naturally curious about the whole thing.
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The first thing that struck me was the vastness of the site, all unspoiled, beautiful, wooded, farmland. A huge swathe from Cants rose growing fields to the north, adjacent to the small roundabout at the top of Mile End Road, all the way down to the back of Bergholt Road, Prior Way, Hugh Dickson Road, etc. The second thing that I noticed, as we walked onto the farmland, was the noise from the A12. Who would want to live in housing so close to all that noise? I know how bad it is in Stanway, Halstead Road, Peace Road, etc. It's terrible. The third thing that struck me was that this would become something like another Greenstead; a huge housing estate of, without doubt, small, gardenless, multi-storeyed dwellings. How will they cope with the services, the sewage, the drainage, etc? What about the vehicle traffic, schools for the children, pubs, shops, community centres, etc? A development of this magnitude will have all these needs.
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The land, I understand, all belongs to the Cant family. No more roses from that once famous company. The Cant family presumably stand to make a huge profit from this agricultural land, as I don't suppose for one minute that they are selling it at agricultural land prices. If this gigantic enterprise does go ahead, it will be a rape of our wonderful countryside. A tragic loss of landscape, wildlife, cultural heritage and way of life for the people of Colchester - and Mile End, in particular.
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Surely this cannot be right. If we must have new housing on this scale, why concentrate it all in one place? There are so many other locations across the whole borough where new housing can be built with minimal impact, where existing farmers or other landowners could sell a bit of land perhaps; where smaller independant builders can take on smaller, affordable, projects and where the quality and architectural diversity that that would bring would make Colchester so much more attractive to both inhabitants, migrants and visitors alike.
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This is clearly an ugly business, a dubious piece of planning work, where only the big boys will profit and Colchester will be the loser. Stop it now, before it is too late. For goodness sake, let's knock the heads together of these idiot planners and thereby bring about a sensible decision for what Colchester's needs really are.