Your Gazette article and letters columns feature attacks on Colchester Council for spending money on garden community leaflets, on the suggestion of bias in featuring a young white couple holding house keys and for “propaganda”.

That is so wrong on all counts.

Those opposed to garden communities deserve to be heard. And they are. They are leafleting and pushing hard. They believe they are right. They have a Cause, after all.

But they and their supporters are wrong to to tell others not to engage, not to make a case.

Local councils have a duty to the public. We must speak up for the huge opportunity that garden communities offer, for better places to live and work.

Thus a leaflet that gets to all, the elderly and disadvantaged, not just those enjoying the Gazette and Essex County Standard, or having a go at each other on Twitter.

Our leaflets do not preach. They make a reasonable and positive case and invite the reader to make up their mind.

Different images can always be used but the point of our leaflet is clear, having a home of any kind really matters.

Thus our support for garden communities because they will mean more affordable homes, more council housing and better places to live, for everyone, whatever their ethnicity, or backgrounds.

It is a fact that developers pocket the profits. It is a fact that getting contributions from them for affordable homes or facilities can be difficult and that new housing often comes without the facilities and roads and transport needed.

Soon we will have an alternative. Garden communities: Developments with more space and facilities, a better quality of life and a community voice throughout.

To point this out is not “propaganda”, it is stark clarity, that we can have more of the same or something different and better.

Garden communities that turn some of the money gained from building houses into facilities and infrastructure for us all.

Cllrs David King and Julie Young

(Cllr King) Lib Dem borough councillor responsible for business and (Cllr Young) Labour deputy leader