A car park built without permission harms the Green Belt, planners have told a golf club in Buckinghamshire.

Buckinghamshire Council said on Monday that it had refused to grant retrospective planning permission for the overflow parking for 15 cars at Burnham Beeches Golf Club on Green Lane.

Officers claimed that the car park, an extension to the original one, had resulted in the ‘the removal of a significant number of trees’ and ‘greatly contributes to the overall spread of development within the site’.

In a decision notice, planners wrote: “The proposed development constitutes inappropriate development within the Green Belt, which by definition is harmful.”

They added that the trees and shrubs lost ‘were key to the rural character and appearance’ of the area.

The council’s refusal comes after previous plans for proposed parking for 34 cars in two separate areas at the club were also refused.

Northeast Burnham Residents Association described the club’s plans as an ‘egregious urbanisation of the Green Belt’.

A spokesperson for the association said: “In spite of the refusals, it decided to remove over 250 square metres of native, high quality, mature woodland and adjacent grassland to replace it with a concrete and tarmac car park.”

An ecological appraisal report on behalf of the applicant said the area comprised a few ‘middle aged’ trees, with no signs of badgers or nesting birds, and that loss of the plants for the car park would be offset by planting ‘a new band of woodland’.