A row has broken out over whether grass and scrub were deliberately cleared from a site at Hilperton for a proposed McDonald’s drive-thru restaurant to help the company overcome bat and badger objection issues.
Protestors campaigning to stop the proposed drive-thru say the 3.9-acre site to the east of the A361 Devizes Road and Hilperton Drive was deliberately cleared on August 18 prior to a bat survey around four days later.
The impact, they claim, would have been to deliberately damage the foraging potential for badgers and bats that use the area, including the rare Bechstein’s bat.
Rachel Kingsmill, of the McDonald’s Hilperton – I’m NOT lovin it group, said: “The company that provided the scrub clearance on August 18 is Devizes-based Conservation Contractors.
“This was as a result of a request from a bat consultant, on behalf of McDonalds. Four days after the clearance, he did his survey.
“Without the insects who inhabit the long grasses, the bats didn't have food, and presumably didn't linger. There’s nothing for them to feed on now that the site is cleared.”
A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “We refute the claims that we were involved in this action.
"As we haven’t yet taken occupation of the site, we wouldn’t be allowed to carry out maintenance work of any kind.
“As the application states, we will be creating a number of landscape enhancements to ensure that there is still a habitable home for any nearby wildlife.”
William Warden, who together with his wife Sarah, runs Conservation Contractors in Devizes, confirmed he had cleared grass and scrub from the site for McDonald’s ecological consultants, Practical Ecology Ltd based in Norfolk.
He said: “I have been told not to comment.
“It has got nothing to do with McDonald’s. We were asked to do it by the ecology company.”
A Practical Ecology employee said they would not normally ask for grass and scrub to be cleared from a site prior to conducting a survey.
“No, not normally. We like to see it as it is. It really would have been done on behalf of the client.”
Practical Ecology submitted its ecological appraisal of the site on behalf of McDonald’s Restaurants to Wiltshire Council’s planning department on July 5.
The report says it found evidence of up to eight species of bats living in the area and foraging for food on the southern edge of the site.
The firm’s ecologists who wrote the appraisal have so far failed to return a call from the Wiltshire Times.
A spokesperson for L&Q Estates, which jointly owns the site at Hilperton near Trowbridge with Heron Land Developments Ltd, confirmed they did not authorise the clearance.
She said: “The vegetation clearance which took place was not carried out following instructions from L&Q Estates or Heron Land Developments Ltd.”
The proposed site lies within the internationally important Bradford on Avon Bat Special Area of Conservation for bats, including the bat consultation zone surrounding a significant network of roosts for rare species roosting in local mines and woods.
They include breeding colonies of Bechstein’s bats in Biss Wood and Green Lane Wood near Trowbridge, and the Greater and Lesser Horseshoe bats, as well as Barbastelle bats.
A Yellow medium risk bat sensitive zone, a buffer zone of 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) surrounding the ‘core roost’ for Bechstein’s bats, borders the northern edge of the proposed development site.
A confidential nine-page report from Practical Ecology relating to the presence of badgers on or near the site says: “The removal of sections of the scrub and other habitats on site will also reduce foraging potential for badgers.”
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