Explosive News!

Rosie Law of SWHayling group notified all Hayling's Infrastructure Advisory Group members that include elected Councillors, Council Officers and Hayling and Langstone Residents' representatives, just last week that someone has put explosive bird scarers in the land of site H34C, which includes UE18 (Sinah Field proposed Development site), where the protected Brent Geese have been foraging.

On 1st December 2017 Rosie and others were able to send clear videos to Havant Borough Council for Lewis Ford to take up further with David Hayward and other ‘enforcers’ when he returns to the office on Monday. Debbie Whitfield at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust has given relevant advice and received the videos as well.

Key to this issue is that, in order for The Oysters Development to have proceeded, it was agreed between HB Council and Barratt Homes that there will be mitigation for the loss of Brent Geese grazing land. This was to be achieved by maintaining fences to deter the dog walkers and the informal path ways in the vicinity of the geese to avoid disturbing them, but this has not been carried out.

The bird scaring explosives ignite every 20 minutes causing 2 loud shotgun-like bangs, on the foraging area, to actively discourage the geese rather than actively encourage, as per the discharge of condition for The Oysters adjacent to this area. This is happening almost a month since the birds (500+) arrived and foraged every day on the winter wheat.

Thankfully good photographic evidence showing H34C is an important site for Brent Geese, has been well documented.

As there is a current proposal for building in and around this site by the very same developer who clearly has no interest in committing to their responsibility in upholding their binding agreements in the Discharge of Condition for the Oysters, surely this should add weight to the argument against allowing Barratt Homes to build a large scale development that would require massive and on-going ecological mitigation strategies to allow planning permission to be agreed.