CHANGES to the plans for Colchester’s St Botolph’s quarter will not do anything to convince the scheme’s opponents, it has been claimed.

Revised plans were submitted by Alumno on Friday in a bid to get its scheme past Colchester Council’s planning committee.

However campaigners, who have been fighting against the plans since they were first submitted, have already spoken out against the latest set of details - saying very little has been changed.

Arts aficionado Dorian Kelly, one of the leading opponent of the scheme, said the plans were still full of flaws and the area was at risk of looking like a “largely empty, built up wasteland”.

He said: “After all those assurances the original Alumno plan for the Cultural Quarter were so perfect, it has been withdrawn and a new version put in.

“Lets play ‘spot the difference’.

“Ok, it is a few feet further away from the Roman Wall and it is slightly lower in places, but fundamentally it’s the same plan.

“There is the same blockyness, same 330 piles smashing through the buried heritage, same inappropriateness for a town centre and same lack of value to the public purse.

“If the planning committee pass it, they will have colluded in writing off the town centre as a social, cultural, heritage and small retail centre and condemned it to an uncertain future with large swathes of private and largely empty, built up wasteland.”

Castle ward Tory councillor Darius Laws has been an outspoken critic of the scheme.

“At the moment I do not think it is palatable and I do not think the changes will change the minds of those who are opposed to the proposals,” he said.

“I want the council to give us a masterplan for the overall site, which means have more challenging conversations.

“We are still not having a conversation about the wider area around Firstsite.”

Mr Laws said he did not believe the student rooms, of which there will now be 336, was a problem, but the lack of a focal point for the scheme was.

He added: “My initial reaction is that we are not getting enough on the ground floor to make the impact needed.

“The problem is we are not creating a destination for people.

“I can live with student accommodation being in the town centre as long as it is above something of interest.”