Who may hold a European protected species licence

A European protected species mitigation licence is issued by Natural England to a named applicant, and the ecological work under it has to be carried out or supervised by a named ecologist whose competence Natural England has accepted for that species. There is no public register of "licensed ecologists" in the general sense: competence is assessed either on the individual licence application or through registration under a class licence, and the two routes have different requirements. A protected species mitigation licence holder is therefore someone whose experience has been accepted for the species and the method in question, not simply someone with a survey licence.

That distinction causes real problems at appointment stage, because survey licences and mitigation licences are different things.

Why a licence is needed at all

Bats, great crested newts, dormice, otters and a short list of other species are European protected species, and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 make it an offence to deliberately capture, kill, injure or disturb them, or to damage or destroy a breeding site or resting place.

Those offences are absolute in the sense that good intentions are no defence. Where a development will cause one of them, the lawful route is a licence derogating from the protection, granted only where three tests are met: the work is for a purpose of overriding public interest or another permitted reason, there is no satisfactory alternative, and the favourable conservation status of the species is maintained.

Planning permission does not authorise any of this. A permission and a licence are separate, and carrying out works that disturb a roost under a valid planning permission without a licence is still an offence.

Great crested newts, badgers, reptiles and nesting birds each have their own regime. Badgers are protected under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 with its own licensing, and reptiles and nesting birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 without a mitigation licence route, which changes the mitigation strategy entirely.

The competence Natural England expects

For an individual licence, the named ecologist's experience is set out in the application and assessed.

What is looked at: the number and type of previous licensed projects for that species, the length and nature of survey experience, demonstrated ability in the specific methods proposed such as endoscope inspection, exclusion, trapping or translocation, and relevant qualifications and institutional membership, commonly chartered or full membership of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management.

Species specificity is the point most often missed. Experience with bats does not establish competence for great crested newts, and experience with common pipistrelle roosts does not automatically establish competence for a maternity roost of a rarer species or for a horseshoe bat. Ask which species and which roost types the person has worked on under licence.

A Protected Species Survey and any mitigation licence legally require a suitably licensed ecologist, and a drafted method statement is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute for them.

Class licences and the registered consultant route

Alongside individual licences, Natural England operates class licences that allow certain low-impact activities to be carried out by ecologists registered under them, with reporting rather than a full application.

The bat low impact class licence is the one most often encountered. It permits work affecting small numbers of common species in low conservation significance roosts, subject to defined eligibility criteria, and it is held by registered consultants who have demonstrated the necessary experience. The attraction is timescale: a registered consultant can act under the class licence with a site registration process far quicker than a full licence application.

The limits are strict. Where the roost type, species or numbers fall outside the eligibility criteria, the class licence cannot be used and a full licence is needed, and a consultant who tries to squeeze a borderline case into the class route creates risk for the developer.

The district level licensing approach for great crested newts is a different mechanism again, under which a developer pays into a strategic scheme that delivers habitat at a landscape scale rather than translocating newts on site. Where it is available it can remove months from a programme, and whether it is available depends on the district.

What the licence application has to contain

A full mitigation licence application is a substantial document and the survey evidence underpins all of it.

It needs the survey data establishing presence, numbers, roost or breeding site type and status, with surveys carried out in the correct season to the relevant good practice guidelines. It needs the method statement describing exactly how the work will be done, in sequence, with timing. It needs the mitigation and compensation proposals, including replacement roosts or habitat with their specifications and locations. It needs a monitoring programme, often running several years. It needs the three derogation tests addressed explicitly, with the planning permission usually relied on as evidence of the public interest and the absence of a satisfactory alternative. And it needs the named ecologist's experience.

Partial surveys are the usual reason an application fails. One emergence survey where the guidelines call for three does not establish roost status, and Natural England will ask for the rest.

Timing against the survey season and the decision

This is where schemes lose months, and the sequence is not negotiable because it is biological.

Bat emergence and re-entry surveys run from May to September, with the optimal window May to August. Great crested newt presence surveys using environmental DNA are limited to 15 April to 30 June, and trapping surveys run from mid-March to mid-June. Dormouse surveys run April to November. Reptile surveys run April to October with spring and early autumn best.

Then add the administrative time. A licence application cannot normally be submitted until planning permission has been granted, because the derogation tests rely on it, and Natural England takes a period of weeks to determine it. So the realistic sequence is survey in season, submit the application, obtain permission, apply for the licence, then start work, and if the surveys were not done in the right season the whole chain waits a year.

Start the ecology before the architect finishes the drawings. It is the longest lead item on most small sites, longer than the planning determination itself.

Who carries the liability

The offences are personal, which is the part developers underestimate.

Liability can fall on the person who carries out the act, and on those who cause or permit it, so a landowner, a developer and a contractor can each be exposed, as can an ecologist who advises wrongly. A licence protects the activities it authorises, carried out by the people it names, in the way it describes. Work outside those terms is unlicensed.

In practice the risk arrives through departure from the method statement: clearance in the wrong order, a roof stripped by machine instead of by hand, a works window missed so the exclusion happens during the maternity season. That is why the method statement should be in the construction contract and why ecological supervision on site matters.

Checking a consultant's status before appointing

Five checks, all answerable in an email.

• which species they hold licensed experience for, and in which roost or habitat types
• whether they are a registered consultant under the relevant class licence, and for which activities
• their institutional membership grade and whether it is chartered
• how many licence applications they have submitted in the last two years and how many were granted without a request for further survey
• whether they will act as the named ecologist on this project, or whether a colleague will

Then at quotation stage ask what the quote includes: the surveys by season, the licence application drafting, the Natural England fee where applicable, the mitigation design, site supervision during works and the monitoring years afterwards. Monitoring is routinely excluded from the headline fee and routinely required by the licence, so a quote without it is not comparable with one that has it. The authorship question generally is covered in checking a consultant's appeal track record and changing consultant during a live planning application, and the reviewer side sits in the professional directory.

Surveys and mitigation licences for European protected species legally require a suitably licensed ecologist, and PlanScope's draft is a starting point for that professional rather than a substitute. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.