DEVASTATED parents believe their children's lives will be put at risk by a new housing development given the go-ahead after months of protest.

O & H Properties were given permission to build 38 houses on the site of the former Bath and Portland Stoneworks, in Westwells, near Corsham, at a meeting on Wednesday night.

Access to the houses will be through Moor Park, a quiet cul-de-sac where children play, and furious parents say they will now have to move to protect their safety.

Moor Park resident Vicky Matcham, 44, said: "They have put my four children's lives at risk.

"We're going to move house because I don't want to put my children's lives at risk."

She moved to Moor Park with her husband Tim, 44, and her four children, four years ago, attracted by the quiet and safe neighbourhood.

They plan to write to Prime Minister Tony Blair to express their disgust.

Mrs Matcham said: "I'm so cross. The corner by my house is a nightmare and there is going to be 250 cars going past my front door every day."

Residents have been fighting the plans since February, when O & H Properties first submitted its application.

Mr Matcham said: "It makes a mockery of local democracy."

His 13-year-old son Oscar stood up in front of a previous council meeting to plead with councillors not to take away the place where he plays safely with his younger brother.

At Wednesday's meeting six-year-old Hannah Truelove, from Moor Park, also begged the council bosses to think of the children on the estate.

She criticised the highways authority's view that Moor Park provides an appropriate access to the new development.

She said: "I have lived in Moor Park all my life and I have enjoyed a safe place in which to play. "However, I have been told by the highways authority that I have no right to play on the road. Can you tell me where I now can play?"

She said she wants her baby sister to have the same opportunity to play in Moor Park.

"Please stop cars coming into Moor Park," she said.

Cllr Peter Davis called the plans a "recipe for disaster" and said: "The increased amount of traffic through the small and windy roads will be totally unsatisfactory and very dangerous.

"I cannot understand why, with the amount of feeling and concern that has been shown, the developers haven't taken the trouble of looking at different ways of accessing this site."

Cllr Dick Tonge said the site visit by the highways authority had been unsatisfactory.

"There was no risk assessment of the alternatives, only a repetition of past arguments for keeping the status quo," he said.

Wiltshire County Council's highways officers, who visited the site early in August, made no objections to the plans, which received 36 letters of opposition from residents.

The developer claimed the road through Moor Park had been designed to accommodate the traffic to the stone works development.