Natural England EPS Mitigation Licence for Bats

 A great start to the week for our Ecology team who were successfully granted a European Protected Species (EPS) Bat Mitigation Licence from Natural England for a project in Somerset where our client has planning permission to redevelop three derelict agricultural barns into residential properties. 

 Early in 2021 our ecologists undertook a preliminary roost assessment for bats, followed by dusk and dawn bat activity surveys. Five species of bats were identified using the barns for summer roosting, including lesser and greater horseshoe bats. 

 Bat tubes will be placed into the renovated barns for crevice-dwelling bat species, such as common and soprano pipistrelle bats that were also identified during the activity surveys. A stand-alone dedicated bat roost will also be created within the site for horseshoe bats.  This will be in an area which will be enhanced and managed with a wildflower meadow and new connective hedgerows to provide foraging and commuting habitats for bats. 

 Further enhancements within the site will include swift and bat boxes, along with the planting of native tree species, which will further enhance the habitat and provide biodiversity net gain within the development. 

 Our client says ‘Ellendale Environmental have provided both my company and I with a great service, offering professional/expert advice, directional approaches and solutions to our challenges that were well explained and highly pragmatic, that produced the right results in a timely way. Equally importantly, the service was great value when compared to many of the alternative proposals I received. I will definitely work with Stewart and the team again with any environmental requirements for future projects and certainly recommend Ellendale very strongly’.