In May 2013, we walked the surrounding woodland with an SLR Technical Director who was an expert in ecology. He said that a number of the small woodland ponds in the locality had ideal conditions for great crested newts, particularly the one in Cadhay Wood that is fed by water directly from Straitgate Farm. He said these sites would be surveyed in due course, but he left the company a short time later.
We now find that "the majority of ponds within 500m of the site boundary were not surveyed due to lack of access permission" 2.3.1.
Neither the landowners at Cadhay and Escot, nor we acting as coordinators, denied access to anyone at any time. In fact, the pond in Cadhay Wood, some 500m away from the site, is not even indicated on SLR's map, whilst the pond indicated at location 7, an arable field, does not exist.
SLR won’t find protected species if it doesn’t look for them. Or is that the idea?
This is just the start of the inconsistencies, errors and omissions that have jumped out of Aggregate Industries' applications to quarry Straitgate and process the as-dug material on Woodbury Common.
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| Purple orchids in Cadhay Wood |
