Prince’s pal Tom in flap over bats

PRINCE WILLIAm’S confidant Tom Bradby saw off rivals to become ITV’s main anchorman, but the newsreader faces an even stiffer challenge to win approval for a programme of improvements to his £1million home in Hampshire.

For Bradby — who wants to extend the ground and first floors of the property he shares with wife Claudia, pictured, and their three children, as well as build a pool house — has been warned that the works might pose a risk to protected wildlife. A senior ecologist at Test Valley Borough Council, which will rule on Bradby’s application later this month, said he was ‘concerned’ that it could result in the ‘killing, injury or disturbance’ of bats.

Permission should be refused, he said, unless there are no bats or that any impacts on them will be ‘mitigated’ or ‘compensated’.

Bradby is used to being in the line of fire, with his BBC rival in the 10 o’clock ‘battle of the bongs’, Huw Edwards, publicly mocking ITV’s much lower viewing figures.