Badger setts, licensing and the closed season

If there is an active badger sett on your site, you will need a badger sett licence from Natural England before anything touches it, and you will only get one between 1 July and 30 November. That window is the single most important fact for a small developer to absorb. A sett found in February does not stop the scheme, and it does not stop the planning application. It stops the ground works until summer.

Badgers sit outside the European protected species regime. They have their own statute, their own licence and their own closed season, which is why ecologists treat them separately from bats and newts even when all three turn up on the same field.

What the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 makes an offence

Section 1 makes it an offence to wilfully kill, injure or take a badger, or to attempt to do so. Section 3 is the one that catches development. It is an offence to damage or destroy a sett, to obstruct access to any entrance, to cause a dog to enter a sett, or to disturb a badger while it is occupying a sett.

Section 14 defines a sett as any structure or place which displays signs indicating current use by a badger. Two consequences follow. A hole that has not been used for years is not a sett, and a single well used entrance in a hedge bank is. Current use is a matter of evidence rather than opinion, which is why the survey record matters so much if the question is ever tested.

The offences are absolute in the sense that intent to harm badgers is not required. Wilfully means the act was deliberate, so a machine operator who deliberately removes a hedge bank commits the offence whether or not they knew what was in it.

Surveying the site and identifying sett types

A sett survey can be done at any time of year, but the evidence is clearest between late autumn and early spring when ground vegetation is low. The surveyor walks the site and a buffer around it, usually 30 metres and often more where the boundary is open, and records entrances, spoil heaps, latrines, hairs on wire, push throughs in hedges and well worn paths.

Setts are then classified. A main sett has many entrances, large spoil heaps and continuous use, and it is the breeding sett for the social group. An annexe sett sits close to the main sett and is connected to it by paths. A subsidiary sett is more distant and used intermittently. An outlier sett has one or two entrances, little spoil and no obvious path network.

The classification drives everything downstream. Closing an outlier sett on the edge of a field is a straightforward licence application. Closing a main sett means relocating a social group, which needs an artificial sett, a longer programme and a much stronger justification.

Where the territory question matters, bait marking in late winter and early spring maps which group uses which sett. That survey is seasonal and cannot be compressed. A badger survey usually sits within a wider preliminary ecological appraisal so that the whole site is covered in one visit.

When a licence is required

You need a licence from Natural England if the works will damage or destroy a sett, obstruct access to it, or disturb a badger occupying it. Development licences are issued under the 1992 Act for the purpose of development as defined in section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, so the planning permission normally has to be in place before the licence is granted.

That sequencing catches people out. The planning authority wants to know that a licence is likely to be granted before it decides the application, and Natural England wants the permission before it issues the licence. The way through is a badger mitigation strategy submitted with the planning application, setting out the survey results, the avoidance measures, the proposed closure method and the timing. Councils routinely condition that strategy and require the licence to be produced before works start.

You do not need a licence to work near a sett if you can stay outside the working distances and the sett remains undisturbed. Designing the scheme to keep the sett is almost always quicker and less costly than closing it.

The closed season and what it does to your programme

Natural England will not normally grant a sett closure licence during the badger breeding season. Licences are issued for the period from 1 July to 30 November, and interference is not licensed between 1 December and 30 June because cubs may be dependent underground.

Work the consequence back through the programme. A licence application takes time to prepare and determine. Exclusion itself takes weeks. If your site clearance is planned for March, either you design around the sett or you wait until July, and the second option carries a summer of standing costs.

There is one partial escape. Where the works can be phased so that everything outside the working distances proceeds first, a scheme can start while the sett area is fenced off and left until the window opens. That needs the phasing to be drawn, conditioned and policed, and the fence has to be genuine.

Closure, exclusion and artificial setts

Sett closure under licence follows a sequence rather than a single event. One way gates are fitted to every entrance so badgers can leave and cannot return. The sett is then monitored for a minimum period, typically 21 days, with all entrances checked and any new digging dealt with. Only when the sett is confirmed clear is it destroyed, usually by hand digging back under ecological supervision.

Where a main sett is being closed, an artificial sett is normally required. It has to be built in suitable ground within the group's territory, away from the development, and it should be constructed well in advance so the group has somewhere to go. Expect a monitoring condition running for several seasons afterwards.

The licence will name the ecologist who supervises the work. That person carries the responsibility for compliance on site, and the licence conditions will be specific about methods, timing and reporting. Sett closure is work for a suitably experienced ecologist, and a draft document is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute.

Working distances and site protection

Natural England's standing advice sets out distances that keep works lawful without a licence. Heavy machinery should not be used within 30 metres of a sett entrance, lighter machinery within 20 metres, and there should be no ground disturbance or excavation within 10 metres. Verify the current distances before you rely on them, because standing advice is revised.

In practice that means a protective fence at the outer distance, marked on the construction drawings and shown in the ecological method statement. Storage of materials inside the buffer is the usual breach. So is a temporary haul road that quietly clips the corner of the exclusion zone.

Light spill and prolonged noise close to an active sett can amount to disturbance even where nothing is dug, so a scheme with night working next to a sett needs that addressed in the method statement.

What the council expects with the application

A badger record in the ecology report triggers a predictable list. Survey methodology and dates, a plan showing sett locations and classification, the working distances applied, the mitigation and timing, and a statement on whether a licence will be needed. Where closure is proposed, the council will want confidence that Natural England is likely to licence it.

Badgers also matter for biodiversity accounting, because hedgerows and scrub retained for badger use are habitat units in the metric. A biodiversity net gain assessment has to be completed by a competent person under the Environment Act 2021 regime, and the badger mitigation plan should line up with the habitat retention it assumes. Where protected species work is needed, a protected species survey and any mitigation licence must be handled by a suitably licensed ecologist.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. To see which ecology and planning documents your site is likely to need, enter the postcode on PlanScope. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.