143Spotlight on Ecology

Rural sites, especially, may need an ecological assessment as part of the planning process, says Mark Brinkley — and here’s what to bear in mind

Building expert Mark Brinkley investigates how ecological assessments may impact your building project

What’s housebuilding got to do with ecology? Not enough for some; too much for others. It’s something of a divisive topic. While it sounds like a soft, cuddly sort of concept, ecology has teeth and you need to at least be aware of your responsibilities.

The very term ecology is not that easy to understand. If pressed, most people would struggle to provide a coherent definition. Whereas the word ‘green’ is a mood music word which tells you about the aspirations of the builders, ‘ecology’ is rather different, for it’s a branch of science explaining how various aspects of the environment interact. But ecology in housebuilding circles carries with it an understanding that when we undertake a building project, we shouldn’t leave the environment in a worse state than when we started.

Consequently when a site is put forward for planning permission, its ecology is routinely evaluated by the planning office. If it is deemed to be of any ecological value, conditions will then be imposed on any subsequent planning approval re

quiring the developer to professionally assess the site and to take restorative action if required.

So what could trigger the interest of a planning officer in the first place? They look for the presence of mature trees or hedgerows, streams or ponds and also for nesting or roosting sites for birds and bats. If none of these are present, it is likely that the site will be deemed to be of low ecological value and will not require any subsequent action.

However, many rural sites, especially those with existing buildings, will tick one or more of these boxes, and this leads inevitably to the imposition ➤

of a planning condition requiring a professional ecological assessment.

There is a well-worn routine for such conditions. It starts with a search for an ecological consultant who can come and survey the site. If there’s trees, the process is straightforward and the remedy is typically to minimise the impact of any building work on roots. But if those pesky bats or newts are involved, the survey becomes a complex, timeconsuming affair as the survey can only be carried out at certain times of the year.

This can be terribly frustrating because not only is there the expense of hiring a professional but there is often an inbuilt time delay. You will not be allowed to start work on site until the ecological surveys are complete and you have included acceptable measures to ensure the wildlife is not inconvenienced by your plans. Thus many months can appear to be wasted while all this surveying work is completed. Otherwise sensible self-builders and barn converters have been known to go half crazy during this phase, watching their funds drip away while the oh-so-slow wheels of an ecology survey take place.

The resultant actions that need to be taken are often relatively minor: it is not uncommon to spend far more on the survey than the solution. Owls can be encouraged to use nest boxes, bat roosts can be provided with a few modifications, and newts just need to be able to access the pond.

Occasionally, something on the site, such as a badger sett which could spread under the proposed foundations, could prevent development altogether, but this is usually so obvious that people wouldn’t consider the ground suitable for building in the first place. Most sites can incorporate some wildlife relatively easily.

In fact, many self-builders happily encourage wildlife around their new homes without being forced to do so by planning diktat. Anyone who develops a garden is helping wildlife just by bringing topsoil onto site. People pay good money for water features, too, and where there is water there is always a great diversity of nature.

There are also lots of specific actions you can take while undertaking the build such as building nest boxes for swifts and leaving gaps low down in fences to enable hedgehogs to get through. Do an

online search on wildlife gardening and you will quickly feel overwhelmed by the number of ideas that are available.

What wildlife doesn’t like is unbroken concrete or paved surfaces, impenetrable fencing and an absence of vegetation. There are also certain plants like leylandii that support remarkably little wildlife.

Any self-builder who wants to create a beautiful home is unlikely to want to concrete over their entire garden and then surround it with a 5m wall of impenetrable vegetable matting, so in some ways the desire to make a home rather than just build a property is what ecology is all about.

It would be nice for this to be reflected in the planning system too, but that’s not the way it works. That is why for many the very word ecology strikes fear and trepidation rather than fuelling aspirations to create something sustainable.

Faced with a stream running through his small rural site in scotland, self-builder john Cochrane chose to create an underground watercourse (culvert) to channel the plot’s existing stream, which goes underneath the new house. “originally, i doubted there would be enough space for a house, as it’s a tiny scrap of land with a stream running right across it,” he says.

self-builders jo and dave Reeves had to build their garage first to create a new habitat for the bats that had previously been roosting in a derelict old cottage on site. The bats, a protected species, could not be disturbed until the night time temperatures were warm enough (above 4°C) for several nights in a row. The planning condition led to a delay of around six months and added £8,000 to the overall spend. “We have several bat boxes around now and see occasional bat activity on warm evenings,” says jo.