Residents, councillors and an environment group are opposing plans for 110 houses at a Denbigh greenfield site.

Developers Castle Green have applied for permission to build the homes on fields adjacent to Ysgol Pendref.

But residents and councillors say the proposals would result in ancient hedgerow, trees and agricultural land being lost.

There are also concerns of increased traffic and a strain on the town’s infrastructure such as dentists, doctors and schools.

The Clwyd Branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales has also sent a letter to Denbighshire County Council’s planning department objecting to the plans.

The field is currently grazing land, but was sold off by Denbighshire County Council and earmarked for housing in the last local development plan (LDP).

Helga Viswanathan has lived near the site at Gwaenynog Road for decades and believes the development could damage the environment.

“In 2019 Denbighshire County Council declared a climate crisis, yet they continue to allow developers to rip up our green fields and hedgerows, which adds massively to the loss of biodiversity,” she said.

“The hedgerows surrounding this field are at least 75 years old – with evidence showing that they are likely to date back to the 1840s. This deems them ‘ancient’ and having protected status.

“Castle Green are openly marketing their houses by promoting the beauty of the Welsh countryside, whilst simultaneously destroying that very countryside in order to build on.

“The original LDP recommended that 1,750 houses needed to be built in the whole of Denbighshire. 550 houses, or 660 if you include the proposed development in question, are being built in Denbigh alone, which is a third of the recommended total of the county.

“Our infrastructure simply cannot cope with the sheer number of people that would be putting extra demand on our already stretched services, or the extra cars on the road.”

Cllr Glenn Swingler also strongly objects to the plans.

“In Denbigh, we are building somewhere in the region of 700 homes, most of which are completely unaffordable” he said.

“Only 22 of those are council houses. There are 300 houses being built on the old North Wales Hospital site, 110 on the Lodge Farm site; it must be 200 houses down in lower Denbigh at Brookhouse.

“All the time we are building on greenfield sites. Now the Lodge Farm site, that’s 110 houses. The council sold the site for £1m. The environmental impact will be great in many ways. The hedgerow is ancient. We are going to be demolishing that, plus trees. 110 houses is going to be equivalent to 150 plus cars.”

In its letter to Denbighshire County Council, the Clwyd Branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales wrote: “Climate change, coupled with increasing international tension emanating from countries to the East, and uncertainties regarding food supplies from overseas, make it imperative that we retain every hectare of agricultural land for the growing of crops.”

The application is yet to receive a recommendation to grant or refuse from the council’s planning department.