Bat Surveys in East Anglia in 2025

This year at BiOME, we have carried out over 100 Preliminary Roost Assessments (PRA’s) so far across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex on various barns, dwellings, schools and listed buildings.

During our PRA’s and follow-on dusk emergence surveys/roost characterisation surveys (conducted following best practice with our range of infra-red and thermal devices) and hibernation assessments, we have found bat roosts in every crack and crevice you can imagine including chimneys, roof tiles, within brickwork, in loft spaces and many more. We discovered many day roosts for small numbers of bats across East Anglia and a number of large maternity roosts of Common and Soprano Pipistrelles and Brown Long-eared Bats.

After these surveys we were able to help our clients get licences to progress their developments and implement appropriate mitigation and compensation to ensure the favourable conservation status of local bat populations was maintained.

The Bat Mitigation Class Licence (BMCL) and European Protected Species (EPS) derogation licences that we prepared included a diverse range of mitigation methods including temporarily moving a post-maternity roost of Brown Long-eared Bats into temporary bat boxes placed on nearby trees, whilst re-roofing and internal works could take place. This was followed by adding new entry points and roosting spaces into the renovated building for the Brown Long-eared Bats to return to.

This year Richard has also been accepted onto the Earned Recognition (ER) scheme, meaning he is able to register specific sites, streamlining the licencing process for our projects going forward.