Protesters have launched a fight against plans by Croydon Council to expand a cemetery onto Green Belt land in Tandridge.

People living near the site in Warlingham hope to put an end to the scheme at a planning meeting scheduled later this month.

An urgent need to find space for Croydon's dead has forced cemetery managers to consider a nine hectare extension to Greenlawn.

More than 15,000 plots for graves will be allocated over a five year period if Tandridge councillors vote in favour of their Croydon counterparts' proposals at a planning meeting on February 23.

The plans also provide for the building of a 100-seat chapel.

But residents are preparing to fight tooth and nail to ensure the three-year-old scheme is finally put to rest.

They have bombarded Tandridge planning officers with dozens of letters, claiming a cemetery would be a further invasion of the city into the countryside. This week members of the Warlingham Residents' Association have been mobilising opposition.

"The site is an important area of tranquillity and, because it is on the edge of London, there is always pressure to develop it," said Stella Sanders Hewett of the Warlingham Residents' Association.

"But we have to question whether we want to be forever extending Greater London into the countryside.

"Only a few years ago Croydon Council was applying to develop a golf course on the land. If the need for graves' space is now so urgent, and they claim they have no other land on which to develop, why was a golf course planned for the site?"

Mark Healy, Croydon's manager of cemeteries and crematorium, said: "The golf course was planned for an adjoining site.

"We fully acknowledge it is Green Belt land but our plans include an area of woodland. Keeping the environment green is a priority.

"The Greenlawn cemetery and the site in Mitcham Road is running out of space and there is no other land on which to build."

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