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| The cover of the report contrasts what has been pledged with what actually materialises |
SOME housebuilders are flouting planning conditions aimed at safeguarding birds and other wildlife - and local councils are turning a blind eye.
This is the conclusion of research carried out at 42 new housing estates across five local authorities.
It revealed that many ecological enhancements had simply not materialised.
As a result, the following were - and still are - missing:
* 83 per cent of hedgehog highways
* 100 per cent of bug boxes
* 75 per cent of both bat and bird boxes.
When it comes to plant life, the results are equally grim, with 39 per cent of trees either dead or missing and 82 per cent of woodland edge seed mixes failing to materialise.
Even the features that had been planted were not always properly installed, rendering them effectively useless.
For instance, some 59 per cent of wildflower grasslands were found to be sown incorrectly or otherwise damaged.
The research visits were conducted between June and August this year by a team from from the University of Sheffield.
Says Prof Malcolm Tait from the university's School of Geography and Planning: "The Government has just announced ambitious housing targets, on the assumption that the planning system can ensure harm to nature is mitigated.
"But our research shows that housebuilders are not implementing their promises on ecological enhancements to help nature.
"What we have revealed is a huge, systemic issue and an urgent need for the planning enforcement system to be given the resources it needs to protect wildlife from harm."
Prof Tait notes that, since 2010, local authority budgets have been subjected to cuts, and many enforcement teams are understaffed, leaving them unable to deal with anything but the most serious breaches of planning conditions.
He maintains that there is often very little regulation of developer behaviour in installing measures for ecological mitigation and enhancement.
It appears that some companies may be gambling that no one will have time to check whether they have actually met the conditions of their planning permission or not.
The report suggests that some developers seem to think wildlife consists of " imaginary creatures that live only in documents or in spreadsheets" whereas the reality is that they are living, breathing beings and vulnerable to "a devastating change in land use".
It states: "People sometimes wrongly imagine imagining that, when development starts, wildlife happily decamps from one site to another equally favourable one close by.
"While some creatures may escape destructive effects in this way, the reality is that many will simply perish. "
"Many such erasures, happening here and there across an area, can be a form of death by a thousand cuts, leading to the local extinction of a species.
"Multiply that picture at a regional, national, and international scale of development, and the implications for a much wider biodiversity crisis are obvious."
In the New Year, the research team is hoping to produce a guide that explains how to evaluate new developments for their compliance with planning conditions and how to alert local authorities to breaches.
The Sheffield University report was commissioned by the campaigning organisation, Wild Justice, whose directors are Ruth Tingay, Mark Avery and Chris Packham.
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