The New Bat Roost
Over the past two years, Drayton Old Lodge Ltd has been working alongside experienced ecologist Christian Whiting and Natural England to ensure the safe passage of the roosting bats from the NHS building to their new home.
The NHS extension to the main lodge is thought to date back to the early 1940’s having been built for purpose to house the Hellesdon Hospital Nurses bedroom wing.
Since then it has been used by the prison service and in more recent years as rentable office space.
To obtain our license to move the bats into their new roost we have been monitoring and surveying the roost that is housed within the NHS building for the past two years. We have carried out all relevant surveys to ensure we have captured numbers of specials, number of bats and how they use the space to roost to support in license application to Natural England. As part of the license agreement to demolish the NHS building we have built a compensation roost housed within a large garage built immediately adjacent to the NHS building. The roof of the garage space has been solely dedicated to the bats and built to specification from our ecologist to include ridge and tile vent access, access from the gable ends and specially adapted rafters to allow flying space within. Inside the new roost we have placed various bat boxes including a maternity roosting box for the Brown Long-eared roost. The woodland site has also had additional bat boxes placed within to offer alternative space.
The license from Natural England allows us to commence work as of 1st September 2021 and we anticipate the demolition work to take four weeks in total. During the careful soft strip of the roof space, we will be under the direction of on-site ecologist Christian Whiting who will supervise the movement of any bats as we hand strip the tiles from the roof.
The monitoring thereafter requires us to carry out further surveys on site to ensure the compensation roost has been effective.
Should you have any further questions regarding our work with this subject, please raise an enquiry form on our site.