Doing up our barn almost drove batty me
They’re the protected critters that nearly stymied the Beckhams’ renovations. Now, TARA NEWLEY ARKLE reveals her £4,000, two-year battle with the bat police...
Reading about the Beckhams’ brush with the ‘bat police’ this week brought back a tide of painful — and costly — memories. For months, david and Victoria have been trying to convert an outbuilding at their Cotswolds pile, only to come up against multiple winged obstacles. Wildlife experts have warned their plans will disrupt the local bat population.
The celebrity couple has now been granted planning permission, but only if they comply with several bat-friendly restrictions. For example, they will have to build bat boxes on their home for the creatures to live in.
The species of bat living in my outhouse, however, needed its own indoor nursery. This meant sacrificing a quarter of the barn to these flying interlopers.
There was many a moment when my husband and i wondered if we would ever get the right to refurbish our old barn, which had stood empty of horses and carts for nearly 100 years.
The wooden floors were full of holes, the old tack cupboards hung limply on their hinges. Only the bats seemed to appreciate this outdated homestead, and i was soon to discover that the old adage that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ held some truth, as the creatures really did have more right to the place than we did.
it was only after thousands of pounds and months of wrangling with the local council and natural england — the body that oversees bat protection — that we were able to go ahead with our plans.
When — pre-marriage — i bought my Somerset home in 2007, i wasn’t in any hurry to restore the throwback to another age that sat silently on the edge of my property. nor did i want to move
the bat population on. My family and i took pleasure in peeking in on them roosting in the eaves.
They hung from the ceiling, tiny fur balls wrapped in their gore-Tex wings like brown cotton candy. it was only at night that they would fly into action, in search of their dinner, and we would see them sweep across our garden silhouetted against the night sky.
Then, in 2016, my husband nick moved in. now it was time, we thought, for the bat cave to become a man cave.
When i’d moved in, the previous owners had handed me a ‘bat certificate’ permitting building work — with ominous forebodings to use it before it ran out. not realising the trials and tribulations it took to achieve one of these golden tickets, i let it expire!
But as we began plans to renovate, we quickly learned we’d need approval from natural england to lift so much as a floorboard. Without it, no work could start. getting approval would involve establishing what breed of bats we had and what ‘mitigation’ was needed to ensure they stayed safe and were free to carry on their lives.
Simple, surely? it was anything but. it became clear the only way to navigate the labyrinthine process was to employ an ecological consultant we nicknamed the ‘bat lady’, who proceeded to give us chapter and verse on how to avoid endangering our protected neighbours.
She reeled off lists of dos and don’ts that could lead to fines if they were not followed to the letter — including being alert to evidence of bat droppings, even if you’d never seen an actual bat.
all 18 varieties of British bats and their roosts are legally protected by both domestic and international legislation. and you can face six months in prison — and £5,000 in fines — if you pay no heed to their rights.
First the ‘bat lady’ carried out a survey. These start at £375 and must be undertaken at specific times of year, so as not to disturb the bats’ mating season.
To establish whether bats are present, ecologists must visit night and day in different seasons. increasingly, we felt like intruders in our own home as the bat squad repeatedly turned up to monitor our nocturnal population.
They would set up deck chairs and sit with their flasks until the wee hours, observing the bats that entered and exited the barn, the frequency, and their numbers. eventually, after something approaching six months, we were told that we had a rare species: the lesser horseshoe bat.
To my urban sensibilities, these were simply small bats, but there were some 20 of them roosting in the roof, and, apparently, our barn was being used as a training nursery for the little critters.
The ‘bat lady’ looked positively overjoyed, as if she had hit bat bingo. But bat bingo was no winner for us.
While some species can be accommodated in external boxes, ours would require four to five metres of space to train the little ones to fly. initially, we were told they might need the entire top floor and its vaulted roof space. This would have left us with a staircase going nowhere, and would make the conversion hardly worth doing.
in the end, it was decided that half the upstairs would become a ‘bat alcove’ with access through an existing dovecote: a quarter of our barn given over to bats that are only 3cm to 4cm long and weigh only 6g!
But we couldn’t proceed yet. The report would need to be submitted to natural england and only if it approved it could we then apply for planning permission from the council.
NOW for the really mind-boggling bit. having sent the bat lady’s report and mitigation plans to natural england, to whom we were required to pay more than £1,600, we were turned down.
We were devastated, yet the bat lady cheerfully told us that this was all normal. it was a sort of ‘dry run’ and, sure enough, after submitting an amended report and sweating it out, we got the all clear, and a licence for development that turned out to be free.
To this day, neither my husband nor i understand how this works: our heads still spin over the time the council told us we couldn’t start the build until we had a bat licence, and natural england said we couldn’t proceed unless we had approval from the council. The whole process had us on tenterhooks as the window of opportunity shrank and the bills piled up.
When we did finally cut through the last piece of red tape, towards the late spring of 2016, it was to discover we had only eight days to build the bat roost before the all-important breeding season started. if we didn’t make the deadline, we’d need to postpone work for another six months.
Thanks to our builders working all hours, we just made it. But not without the bat team’s beady eye on us at every turn. as the roof was removed, two ecologists were present to check every tile in case they discovered a new bat homestead that might stop the build altogether.
now, the only human access to the bats is through a trapdoor on the outside wall, reached by a ladder — and it can only be entered by specialist ecologists. We risk a fine of thousands if we open it ourselves.
When we first mooted the conversion, friends told us to get
rid of all evidence of the ‘flying
rodents’ lest they undermine the project. at the time, we dismissed their concerns, and felt smug in our conservationist attitude.
yet now, i understand. The militant zeal of bat protectors, aided by increased legislation introduced in 2010, has led to many buildings falling into disrepair as legal wranglings drag on.
eventually, our conversion was finished towards the end of 2017. From our first plans to finish, it took almost two years and our bats cost us an additional £4,000. Still, as bats have been known to add £10,000 to refurbishments, perhaps we were lucky.
Five years on, my husband barely notices the tenants in his office, for all the fuss they caused. Still, every couple of years, an ecologist comes to check in. Only recently, another motley crew came to access the bat chamber — they attached tiny transmitters to track the bats’ movements to ensure a new dual carriageway in the works will not disrupt their nocturnal excursions.
We watched in disbelief as they shaved their tiny chests and attached the transmitters, amazed at the lengths to which this burgeoning bat protection league will go to protect this species. it’s enough to drive anyone batty.