FENCING has gone up around a popular park as developers prepare to begin work on a controversial housing development.

Developer Redrow Homes is building 135 homes on playing fields off Ballards Walk, in Lee Chapel North, as part of a £7.5million deal with Basildon Council.

The scheme will help the Tory administration finally pay off money it borrowed for the £38million Sporting Village, which opened in 2011.

Diggers can now be seen at the site as builders push ahead with the development, despite opposition and anger from residents.

Cabbie Ralph Morgan, spokesman for the Basildon Hackney Carriage Association, said: “People used to take their dogs for walks on the fields, and kids use to play there.

“I can’t believe all of that greenery is going to be lost to housing.

“All of our open space in Basildon is just disappearing, customers are always commenting on it. We can’t go on like this anymore.”

Former Independent Labour councillor Pat Rackley, of Devonshire Road, Laindon, added: “They have got rid of all those lovely old trees and the green open space, and it looks a mess down there with the metal fencing. It’s never the same when developers plant new trees to replace the established ones.

“I can completely understand why the residents are upset.”

The estate will offer a mixture of two, three and four-bedroom homes.

Residents claim the Ballards Walk development, coupled with a scheme for 73 homes in Markhams Chase, will put a huge amount of pressure on St Nicholas Lane, in Laindon.

Basildon Council has proposed 2,300 extra homes be built in Laindon by 2031 as part of its local plan, mainly in the west towards Dunton.

Ballards Walk, which has outline permission, is included in that plan.

Basildon Council insists 40 per cent of the site will be retained as green space.