Two Essex councils have stepped up the battle to overturn controversial plans for a 180km-long power line through the region - and want to join forces with Suffolk and Norfolk authorities to stop the proposals.

Campaigners want fresh consultation to be carried out and for National Grid to put forward alternative plans for undersea cables, as it has done elsewhere in the UK.

The power line would run through Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex and National Grid has said the alternative of offshore power cables was not “technically feasible or economic”.

Essex County Council unanimously passed a motion against the plans, saying there had been insufficient consideration of alternative approaches including an offshore link undersea.

Councillor David King, deputy Lib Dem group leader who is also leader at Colchester Borough Council, said: “We are united in this. The worse of it all is how poorly this has been done by a body with rights that no other have.

“With that does go responsibility. Trying to do it better should have our support and it deserves our support if it is done with a sense of responsibility.”

Essex County Council leader Kevin Bentley said the proposal was "utter madness".

He said: “Destroying our countryside with more pylons and undergrounding in one of the most beautiful parts of Essex in the Dedham Vale just seems nonsense to me.

“There is a better alternative and that is going around the coast and that is a much better option.

“Our colleagues in Suffolk passed a very similar motion and next week our colleagues in Norfolk are debating the same thing. Should all these motions be successful then I propose we join together and we campaign against this.

“We must make National Grid understand that what they are trying to do is laudable in the concept and very bad in the execution.”

Tendring District Council (TDC) has also unanimously voted against the pylon proposals preferring the cables to go by sea and up river estuaries – removing the biodiversity and visual impacts on land, improving maintenance access, and future-proofing the offshore grid for further wind farm connections.

TDC Leader Neil Stock OBE said: “Successive governments have failed to invest in our energy infrastructure; and pylons are such an outdated form of supplying electricity – this is 100-year-old technology.

“This is the wrong thing in the wrong place, and the consultation has frankly been meaningless, with only one option on the table – and calling it green undermines public support for green energy which is in itself dangerous."

National Grid’s East Anglia GREEN project would see a line of 50-metre high structures run from Dunston, just south of Norwich, to Tilbury in Essex.

The company says the scheme is needed to build more capacity in the UK’s power network, to help the country achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.