Your 'News Extra' report about developer Charles Church's activities at Surrey Court in Finchley is confusing.
Charles Church submitted a proposal for landscaping the site (including the planting of new trees) to the planning sub-committee. This should have been agreed before work started last October, and before trees on the site were felled, but Barnet Council's planning department has allowed them to get away without doing so.
This is quite apart from the other matter mentioned in your report: the felling of protected trees on land in front of the site but not part of the development. Here Charles Church has raised two fingers at the council, which decided not to notice. It is better, apparently, to 'negotiate' with the developer to plant replacement trees at the cost of a few hundred pounds than to take legal action to protect the environment and defend the tree preservation orders.
When are our planning officers going to act in the interests of residents rather than developers?
Dennis Pepper, chairman
Friends of Windsor Open Space
May 6, 2003 18:30
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