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In summer of 2024, I set out with two colleagues to ask: are developers meeting the ecological conditions of residential planning applications? 

Together we looked at 42 housing estates across 5 Local Planning Authorities. 

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What we found was truly shocking.

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47% of ecological mitigations and enhancements are missing. When street trees are removed from the calculation, this falls to 34%.

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In terms of mitigations for species, 83% of hedgehog highways were missing, along with 75% of bat and bird boxes,  and 85% of hibernacula.

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For habitats, 82% of woodland edge seed mixes were absent, 48% of native hedges and 59% of wildflower grasslands.

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Read our report, published by Wild Justice, below (we've even created a handy easy-to-read summary of findings).

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