Say farewell to the wildlife! It looks like curtains for creatures that have made former theme park their home

Behind the prison-style walls -  a sunlit glimpse into a green and leafy world of Pleasure Island

THE Lidl-led consortium seeking to redevelop a former Lincolnshire theme park with a supermarket and holiday lodges has cleared a major hurdle.

It has learned that it will not be required to provide an Environmental Impact Assessment of the effect its project will have on the wildlife that lives on Pleasure Island in Cleethorpes.

That means that songbirds (including cuckoos), bats, water voles and a family of badgers are now in real peril of being displaced, while scores of mature trees and shrubs face the chop.

The consortium's agents, Lichfields, have acknowledged that the site is home to a badger sett, "several" bat roosts and birds such as reed warbler, little grebe, mute swan, kingfisher, little egret and Cetti’s warbler on or around the lake. 

But the firm says "mitigation" can be provided in the form, for  instance, of "nesting opportunities" for birds and flight "corridors" for bats.

North East Lincolnshire Council's planning case officer, Cheryl Jarvis, has accepted Lichfield's assurances and states in her report that redevelopment would bring "no significant effects".   

It is understood that NELC's ecology officer, Rachel Graham, and Natural England both expressed opinions on whether an environmental impact assessment would be advisable, but their reports have not been released.

Long-term, the consortium  has also indicated its futher intention to build two hotels on the site, but this would hinge on sufficient income being generated by the supermarket and  holiday lodges.

The Wryneck says: This is a casebook example of the old adage that everyone likes Nature - until it gets in the way. The council is so desperate to see redevelopment of the former theme park that the conservation of wildlife is being disregarded almost totally. The agent's pledge of appropriate mitigation is so vague and lacking in detail as to be useless. How, for example, do you provide a "nesting opportunity" for a cuckoo? The planning case officer should have been much more rigorous in her analysis of the Lichfields statement.  What is more, any opinions expressed by the ecology officer and Natural England should have been published for all to see.  Why have they been withheld?