By Stuart Millson

Sir: Anyone who believes that "protected" or "conservation areas" in our greenbelt are sacrosanct should come to the Kentish village of East Malling, where a major act of environmental desecration has just taken place.

Believing that a row of poplars somehow constituted a physical threat to passing schoolchildren, one of our local schools - with the apparent support of Borough authorities - set in train, not sensible, prudent pollarding or careful tree surgery, but the wholesale mutilation of this pleasant wooded area in one of the last-remaining green and pleasant corners of the 18th-century Clare Park Estate. The landscape - part of our conservation area - now resembles a scene from the Western Front of the Great War: a shocking vista of mangled trees, destruction and desolation.

It is difficult to know why this work was unsupervised, and how any official body in modern Britain could have acted with such utter disregard to our natural environment and ecology. Urgent measures need to be taken to protect our greenbelt and "ordinary" countryside, as it appears that the latter have no real protection, despite the fine words of the Localism Act.

Yours faithfully

Cllr. Stuart Millson
Independent member of East Malling and Larkfield Parish Council