The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) says Merton Council’s current plan to build homes on the Mitcham site would cause “significant, unavoidable” damage to the historic tree.
The pagoda tree sits in the heart of Mitcham’s Canons heritage site.
This area near the historic Cricket Green area has seen nearly £5m of National Lottery investment in recent years.
Merton Council won £4.4m of national lottery funding in 2017 to redevelop the historical site Credit: Mitcham Cricket Green Community & Heritage
The Canons was recently named as one of four sites where Merton Council will build new council housing to reach its ambitious target of building 400 new homes. The council has granted itself planning approval to build 93 homes across the Canons, as well as the following three other sites:
- Elm Nursery Car Park, Mitcham
- Raleigh Gardens Car Park, Mitcham
- Farm Road Church, Morden
These new developments will be built using the sustainable Passivhaus design, which the council says will help reduce future tenants’ energy bills. A multimillion-pound investment from the Mayor of London’s Affordable Homes programme 2021-2026 will also part-fund the developments.
While the council owns the land on all four sites, the Canons development has proved controversial due to its potential impact on the area’s historic assets. At the centre of these concerns sits a large 70-year-old pagoda tree, named Merton’s Tree of the Year in 2019.
The tree has had a major influence on the building designs for the new houses since the application was first submitted by Merton’s now-bust company, Merantun Developments Ltd, in late 2019. Merton later submitted an application for the ‘full council housing’ development in July 2024.
The plans were amended to ensure the tree became a “focal point of the scheme and a key retained landscape feature”. According to the local civic society, Mitcham Cricket Green Community & Heritage (MCGCH), amenity standards for some new homes were “even relaxed because they face this attractive pagoda tree”.
However, a recent report from the RHS has suggested the plans, in their current form, would pose an existential threat to the tree’s future. The report was prepared for the planning requirements designed to protect the tree.
The RHS report stated: “Should the tree be retained, it was likely to suffer some significant, unavoidable impacts both above and below ground which, when taken together, amounted to a well-justified argument for removal and replacement of the tree.”
It also noted that the amount of canopy needing to be removed “will greatly diminish the tree’s local visual amenity value” and “compromise the tree’s ability to photosynthesise and produce energy”.
Despite these concerns, MCGCH have claimed that Merton’s own Tree Officer believes “the amount of canopy to be removed is well within tolerable limits on this tree”.
MCGCH Chair Tony Burton believes this apparent unwillingness to acknowledge the potential damage it could be doing to the tree is just their latest concern surrounding the Canons redevelopment.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “With so many other council-owned sites available, we strongly question why Merton Council wants to develop the former nursery at The Canons.
“This puts at risk the benefits of nearly £5m, which has just been spent with support from the National Lottery on this premier heritage location. Whatever the pros and cons of allowing development, everyone agrees that the award-winning pagoda tree should be the ‘focal point’ of any new housing.”
He added: “Given Merton Council’s own expert assessment now shows the tree cannot sensibly be pruned to fit the development it is time for Merton Council to accept the development needs to be redesigned to fit around the tree.”
Merton Council was approached for comment, but said it could not comment on live planning applications.
