Bat concerns delay work on town regeneration scheme

A £30m scheme to regenerate key parts of a market town has been delayed after concerns about the possible presence of bats.

Construction work was due to start on the Selby Station Gateway project in late 2025, but a council meeting was told work was yet to begin.

Programme manager Alex Richards said expired planning permissions were resubmitted, triggering checks that revealed bats may be present in parts of the location.

He said work was now expected to begin next month, with demolition scheduled for May.

The gateway project includes improvements to public spaces around the railway station, better walking and cycling links and and a reconfiguration of the roads to reduce "vehicle dominance".

Richards told members of North Yorkshire Council's Selby and Ainsty area committee: "Some elements of the planning consent in order to deliver this scheme have expired.

"They need renewing, and in renewing them they've raised the red flag that there may be bats present in some of these areas now.

"So we now have to put in mitigations and allow for the survey of bats."

He said the team was exploring whether some mitigation work could be carried out in advance, but warned that making significant progress before the bat survey season started in May was proving difficult.

Bats are legally protected in the UK, with it illegal to damage, disturb or kill a bat and its roosting place without a special licence from Natural England.

Additional complications had also emerged, Richards said, with parts of the scheme having to be redesigned after they did not fit at the location, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Councillor Melanie Davis, who represents Selby West, said she had concerns about how long the project was taking and how money was being "whittled away" on it.

Speaking at the meeting, she said: "I have a concern in the way it's been presented that this might all end up being the bats' fault and I don't want anybody to run away with that.

"The bats are happy doing whatever they're doing where they do it. This is not their fault."

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