If memory serves me correct the yard was there for many years before the houses and 'plethora of regulations' were forced on it.
The regulations regarding 'scrapyards' (reclamation centres etc) have improved this industry beyond recognition. Once a haven for disposing of stolen goods and pollution, the industry has now become a legitimate and a beneficial trade in recycling resources. There are many areas of brown field sites in inner cities where these scrapyards once stood that are so polluted with toxins that they cannot be built on. In some areas, the pollution has seeped into the water table and streams and it will take many years and enormous amounts of energy and finance to remove the contaminates. In the hot summer of 1976 I actually saw an inner city canal so polluted that the surface caught fire!
Every industry I can think of has had to change with regulation for public benefit, be it environmental, health and safety or to curtail illegality.
But, perhaps we were better of in the good old days before the 'plethora of regulations', with stinking tanneries, pneumoconiosis, outside privies, children up chimneys and down mines, rickets, lead poisoning....