An outline planning application for 75 homes, next to a River Crane nature reserve, has resulted in a wholesale destruction of a nature conservation buffer zone, as specified by Richmond Council's Unitary Development Plan (UDP).

Local objectors, shocked by the loss of the natural habitat, and already dismayed by the massive development of the 'Feltham Marshalling Yards' to the north, accuse the Council of a collusive lapse of discipline. The original owners of the 'Mill Farm Site', LB Hounslow, mysteriously ceded it to the adjacent authority "for no consideration" when the borough border moved to the north. LB Richmond then eventually sold it to Richmond Churches Housing Trust, with the site boundary already adjusted to accommodate the subsequent plan, hence the felling of mature Birch Trees to gain access.

According to the architect the land (originally a scrap yard for aircraft) had to be cleared because of contamination. The complaint is then that a soil survey had indeed been completed in 1997 but the implications of it failed to surface as an issue during the UDP review inspection, nor during the outline plan approval.

"The possible conflict with nature conservation interests should and could have been settled in the first instance," says local resident Ron Harvey: "Certainly enough there was no indication of anything to be felled immediately opposite to the flats. A row of eight protected trees was indicated. The plan did not correspond exactly to those that were standing but there can hardly be any dispute as to what presently survives: three trees and another bushy one, not marked at all on the plan."