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eekoh

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First time self-builder, been planning a long time and finally reached the point where buying a plot seems achievable. There’s one in particular that I’m interested in and I’m investigating a few things with a view to potentially making an offer this month. Still early stages yet but I’m sure I’ll find some useful tips from reading the forum here.

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Hmmm, having read some of the threads and comments referring to vampire bats, expensive flying vermin and folks bemoaning the 'unnecessary' LPA request for & cost of ecological work I'm hoping that I don't get too frosty a reception, what with me being a bat ecologist. ? 

 

 

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Hi and welcome.

 

I hope you have a tin hat handy.

 

I am pretty sure all of us respect wildlife and it's right to exist. What I suspect most object to is not being allowed to make decisions for ourselves and take common sense measures to be wildlife friendly, but instead to be treated like idiots / vandals and be forced to pay for someone to write on a bit of paper what is blindingly obvious to most normal people.

 

Thankfully we were not pestered with any of this nonsense in our build. some seem to be over burdened with it.

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9 minutes ago, eekoh said:

Hmmm, having read some of the threads and comments referring to vampire bats, expensive flying vermin and folks bemoaning the 'unnecessary' LPA request for & cost of ecological work I'm hoping that I don't get too frosty a reception, what with me being a bat ecologist. ? 

 

 

 

Hopefully you can give a balanced view - a fair few have had delays caused by poor practice by professionals. Sadly this tends to tar the whole profession. 

 

On the upside - you’re our first ecologist so you’re quite rare ..! 

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Hi and welcome,  

We needed a bat and badger survey due to our lovely neighbours objection but luckly in the end it was pretty painless as they weren't any! 

Will be good for the forum to get your professional input in the future?

 

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Welcome - well i’m sure if you offer to become our resident bat expert, we will all love you and forgive you for the money that we have to spend of bat surveys and the like ??.  Luckily we don’t have to do a bat survey which did surprise me.

 

 

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11 hours ago, eekoh said:

First time self-builder, been planning a long time and finally reached the point where buying a plot seems achievable. There’s one in particular that I’m interested in and I’m investigating a few things with a view to potentially making an offer this month. Still early stages yet but I’m sure I’ll find some useful tips from reading the forum here.

 

Welcome to the forum, and we will do our best with any queries about your plot etc.

 

It will be good to hear from a bat ecologist. I sometimes make sceptical noises about some aspects of the Planning Process, and it will be good to hear a contrasting viewpoint.

 

Ferdinand

 

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I haven't been very vocal about the positive experience I had with my bat ecologist who did a great job and ensured the EPSL licence was granted with minimal hassle to the project.

 

I value the work ecologists do to protect our dwindling wildlife.

 

Welcome to the forum.

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2 hours ago, Onoff said:

Welcome @eekoh!

 

So...if someone had unidentified droppings could you identify them?

 

Yes, its pretty easy to tell bat from rodent droppings when you know what you're looking for, although not necessarily which bat species it is.  Bat droppings crumble to a dry powder when squashed whereas rodent droppings will be hard pellets.

We can also send a sample of the droppings away to a lab for DNA analysis to confirm bat species (usually about £50-60 for the test), but there would probably still need to be some emergence surveys to get the more detailed info needed about where bats entry/exit points are, how many bats are using the roost and whether they are raising young on site (maternity roost) because that affects how the mitigation would be designed.

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I've went out with my late father in law out on a couple of bat surveys he was doing, back in the days when these were done by licensed volunteers, for no charge other than their petrol money.  I ended up building a bat detector (still have it) as I found watching bats, and trying to identify the species, pretty interesting.

 

I think the major problem is that, like a lot of planning-related surveys, it's turned into big business, with some of the companies involved being out to get as much cash out of applicants as possible, just because they know they can demand anything they like to line their pockets.  The first plot we looked at needed an archaeological survey, and the first one dug a couple of large trenches across the site and found the (expected) foundations and floors of an old water mill.  When we tried to get the likely costs of the archaeological work during the build pinned down, we were told it could be anything from a few thousands pounds to a few tens of thousands of pounds, depending on what was found.  In addition, we were advised that the on-site archaeologist would have the authority to stop any work for an unlimited period of time should he spot anything of interest.  We didn't go ahead with the purchase, largely for reasons related to a large boundary error, but the cost uncertainty surrounding the archaeological work was another factor.  The annoying thing was that the county archaeologist was relaxed about it, saying that, in his view, the old mill wasn't of great significance, and shouldn't need much work, but we were (or would have been) beholden to the consultants that had undertaken the initial survey, as the planners were listening to them more than the county chap.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The sometimes laughable penalties for destroying bat roosts is another sore point for consultants and conservationists alike - I've had clients tell me to my face that they'd knock a building down and take the fine rather than pay for the necessary survey work and licence to do it legally.  

Cases like this where even a successful prosecution for someone knowing committing a crime results in a penalty that is such an insignificant amount in their overall project budget is little deterrent to that sort of developer.   

There are however several cases from the last few years where the penalty has been levied under the 'proceeds of crime' legislation, which allows the courts to seize a substantial percentage of the developer's profits - a far better deterrent than a fixed penalty.

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Our ecologist was great, she recognised that I wanted wildlife around our build and gave good advise. I did not want bat roosts in the house but wanted to have them in the garage next to it, she agreed and I built three bat roosts in the roof of my garage. The planners however, despite my forwarding the ecologists report that the bat roosts in the garage were sufficient for the whole site (the ecologist recommended two bat roosts but I built three) told me they still wanted bat roosts in the house. When we went to appeal over the planning refusal, we won on everything including the council trying to over ride the ecologist.

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