Borough planners have clamped down hard on two schemes that could transform the landscape in two of Windsor's most prized residential areas.

A plan by Bewley Homes to build a 37 home development on the site of the vacant Squires Garden Centre in Maidenhead Road was unanimously rejected by councillors on the Royal Borough's Windsor Area Development Control Panel last week. The plan included two blocks of flats two or three storeys high, two detached houses, eight semi-detached houses and a terrace of four homes.

The Royal Borough has indicated that the Green Belt site could be identified as suitable for development in the future borough plan - but members overwhelmingly indicated that they rejected the Bewley plan which was described by one member as 'little boxes with very little design merit'.

There has been strong public objections from nearby residents to any development on the Green Belt sites adjoining the Oakley Green area of Maidenhead Road.

At the same meeting the councillors threw out a plan by applicant Tudor Marsden-Huggins to build a four storey high 50 bed Premier Inn hotel at 437 to 441, St Leonard's Road - regarding the site as completely wrong.

Cllr Amy Tisi, who represents Clewer East ward for the Liberal Democrats, feared pollution from cars visiting the hotel and described putting such a building in St Leonard's Road as like 'parking the Death Star in Dickens novel'.