CONSERVATIONISTS accuse Harrow Council of planning to "renege" on a land swap that would have enlarged a protected wildlife sanctuary by a quarter of its size.
Opponents including Stephen Bolsover, chairman of Harrow Nature Conservation Forum, are concerned the Labour authority wants to lease Ten Acre Field at Wood Farm, in Wood Lane, Stanmore, that was earmarked for absorption into adjacent 35-acre Pear Wood Nature Reserve under an agreement made four years ago by the Conservatives.
They are worried about the potential sale of a neighbouring enclave containing dilapidated Pear Wood Cottages.
Mr Bolsover said: "We are really upset and angry that the council is selling land that they promised would be added to the nature reserve, a nature reserve that warden Claire Abbott has put in many hours of unpaid work in maintaining and protecting.
"Only last Saturday we and a group of volunteers put in a morning's work clearing rubbish from the whole area.
"We urge the council to withdraw this offer and honour the promise made in 2008 to add these havens of nature to the Pear Wood Nature Reserve.
"The new administration has reneged on that promise and has put Pear Wood Cottage up for sale and offered the field for long term rent."
The Tories' 2008 deal - only rubber-stamped after intervention by the then-secretary of state for communities and local government John Denham - allows the owners of Stanmore Dairies, who were CP Holdings at that time, to demolish redundant farm buildings, revamp a vacant house and dairy, and build 10 houses at Wood Farm.
Stanmore Dairies would in exchange surrender its two leases on the remainder of the private agricultural land in order for the majority, 69 acres, to be brought back under council control and combined into Stanmore Country Park - with Ten Acre Field in the farm's north-east corner joining the nature reserve.
However, the development and connected land swap has never been enacted and in July 2011 Stanmore Dairies was sold on.
The new owner approached the council saying in order to see through the original deal it "required" additionally purchasing Pear Wood Cottages and to lease Ten Acre Field, albeit with agricultural use restrictions, for 35 years.
The council's cabinet committee will decide whether to agree to this request on Thursday - thereby earning a "significant return" for the public purse.
Curiously, the deadline for replies to the statutory notice of the sale ends the following day, Friday March 9, and Mr Bolsover and other are urging locals to write in opposition to the plan.
