CONTROVERSIAL plans for a striking, ultra-modern new courthouse building in Colchester have been given the go-ahead.

Colchester councillors have approved a Government application for the £30million court building, on the St Botolph’s car park site – even though planners admit its design is an acquired taste.

Vincent Pearce, the council’s planning services manager, told councillors: “It’s a Marmite building – you either love it or you hate it.

“I think the architects have quite cleverly broken up what could be a monolithic building.

“It does have uniformity and it does have a human scale.”

The courthouse, which has two, three and four-storey sections, will accommodate five courts, 18 holding cells and an 18-space staff car park.

The aim is to have the centre open to replace courtrooms at the Town Hall and in Harwich by 2012.

The design has been criticised by conservationists who claimed the building and, in particular, its four-storey tower, clad in teracotta tiles, would be out of keeping with the surrounding area.

David Stenning, of Colchester Civic Society, said: “The current proposal is old-fashioned modernism, with a few fashionable tricks, which effectively ignores the location.

“I regard this as an extraordinarily unsympathetic proposal which is unacceptably damaging in this location.

“We have had a lot of unpopular buildings going up at the moment in Colchester. Do we need another one?”

And at the planning meeting, Mary Blandon, Lib Dem councillor for Harbour ward, said: “We know we need a new courthouse but that building is just a higgledy piggledy lot of rooms. To me, that is not a pleasing sight.

“We lost the view of the town – the town hall and St Botolph’s Priory – it’s all gone.

“I would like a more traditional building. I think the tower is a shade over the top.”

However, Andrew Ellis, Conservative councillor for Birch and Winstree, said: “This was never meant to be an obscure building sitting within the townscape.”

Councillors voted five to three in favour of the plans.