CSA were appointed to provide urban design, landscape, ecology and arboriculture advice to formulate a strategy which would enable development to succeed at this desirable site. Following a successful outline planning application, approval was granted based on the CSA masterplan for a development of up to 130 new homes and associated infrastructure. CSA’s landscape and ecology teams were also retained to assist in the submission of the reserved matters approval, which was granted in December 2017.
After undertaking a suite of detailed ecological surveys at the overgrown site, dormice were found in the hedgerows and scrub, and reptiles in the grassland. CSA was able to design and agree an appropriate mitigation approach for both, including retaining wide habitat buffers along the site boundaries and ensuring retained habitats will be managed sensitively through the implementation of a Landscape and Ecology Management Plan. An integrated approach by CSA’s ecology and landscape teams allowed some fairly complex planning conditions to be discharged swiftly.
Off-site mitigation was also provided, with an area of the Local Nature Reserve being enhanced for reptiles and funding provided for management in perpetuity for their benefit. In summer 2017, over 300 common lizard were translocated there from the site, with further reptile work continuing on-site in 2018 alongside implementation of a mitigation for dormice under a European Protected Species (EPS) licence.