I was contacted by Andrew Stanbury from the RSPB about this survey and have taken that square near Diggle! Luckily its the nearest one to my house.
The only thing I'm wondering is getting permission to access land if needed, I don't know how to go about it.

I used to go up there when I was at Saddleworth School, so remember a few public footpaths but haven't been up there much recently.

Just an update. OMBC DID approve permission but received a legal letter prior to the planning committee meeting warning that they were acting unlawfully in relation to heritage. They went ahead and approved plans anyway, but then decided to reverse the decision and take it all to planning committee again on 13th April.   

I submitted an objection of around 100 pages;  half of which dealt with ecology and presented detailed data for lapwings and bats.  This was ignored, and when I attended the planning meeting the planning officer actually (& unbelievably) said that the development would 'improve the ecology of the area'.  

GMEU had visited the breeding site for lapwings and proposed to put it forward as an Site of Biological Interest.  However, this was stopped in its tracks & it seems that GMEU are doing little to remind OMBC of their obligations regarding providing mitigation habitat for the lost breeding colony!

In my objection I made the following points:

In a comprehensive survey I carried out for the RSPB in 2007 the fields to be lost to development supported 9 pairs of breeding lapwing and they successfully reared 13 chicks to fledging.

The fact that lapwings are able to nest in high density and successfully rear so many chicks within the proposed development site, in contrast to the surrounding area, is most likely a result of habitat quality associated with grazed wet grassland (the field is part of the floodplain for Diggle brook).  After 2007 lapwings nested each year up to and including 2013.

In spring 2014, prior to the initial ecology surveys being carried out on behalf of the applicant, grazing management was stopped. The removal of grazing management resulted in the grass growing to a height that would prevent lapwings from nesting. The absence or lapwings now does not reflect the quality or potential of the habitat to support lapwings, nor does it represent a change in behaviour of the birds.  They were prevented from nesting because their habitat was degraded.

Any data from surveys carried out after the habitat was degraded should be discounted i.e. from 2014 onwards when grazing was removed during the peak of the lapwing nesting season. Instead, the baseline conditions should be taken as my data from 2007, which was a comprehensive monitoring survey. 

Oldham Council are effectively the applicant, being a party in the land swap deal with the current owner.  As such, the council is obligated to mitigate for this loss of prime habitat for breeding lapwing (which provides both high quality nesting and feeding habitat for adults and chicks). Therefore the council must fund and provide replacement habitat capable of supporting nine pairs of breeding lapwings. The council are obligated to carry out this mitigation!

AS THE WINDOW FOR OBJECTING IS STILL OPEN - I would strongly encourage anyone with an interest in conserving this high quality breeding habitat -  to write a letter to the council objecting to this development on ecology grounds.

There are also serious issues regarding disturbance to important bat commuting routes (Diggle Brook and Huddersfield canal running parallel).

 

 

Oldham Council has approved planning permission for the new Saddleworth School at Diggle.

Another Lapwing breeding site bites the dust

Hi Kerry

It was me who recorded the Lapwing chicks for Bird Atlas. Steve Atkins and Margaret Rawlins had been in touch about the development proposals, so I checked back through my field notebooks and have been able to give Steve precise grid references - which are the fields in the proposal.

Good luck with the campaign. All the valley bottom Lapwing colonies that I used to monitor in Mossley are now under bricks and mortar and another site has been abandoned since they built our new local school

Hi Kerry,

A local bird recorder contacted me last week about this proposed development to express her concerns for the breeding Lapwings. I have checked the GM Bird Recording Group's (GMBRG) database and unfortunately there are very few records of breeding Lapwing from the area. It would appear that your/the RSPB's survey data from 2007 was never submitted to the GMBRG.

Whilst objections to the development would be welcome there is an established procedure for ensuring that the GM district planning departments (in this case Oldham) are made aware of the ecological impacts of proposed developments. We would kindly request that all bird records and survey results from Greater Manchester should be submitted to GMBRG to ensure that that the official county database is as comprehensive as possible. The data is supplied to the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit (GMEU) who are responsible for commenting on the ecological impacts of planning applications and assessing any ecological surveys carried out on behalf of the developers. GMEU will then advise the district planning department/developer if they consider further surveys are required. It is therefore of vital importance that all records/survey results are made available to GMBRG/GMEU otherwise the impacts will not be properly assessed.

There are a number of ways in which records can be submitted which are outlined on the Manchester Birding Website Submission of Bird Records However, to save time on this occasion you can email any data directly to me.

GMEU are also responsible for selecting Sites of Biological Importance across the 10 GM districts. So records submitted to GMBRG are also used to identify new sites as well as maintaining the selection of existing sites.

Finally, would anyone who has bird records for a site which is under threat please ensure these are submitted to GMBRG. Please do not sending records directly to the district planning department.

Steve