We have now released an extensive report prepared by Bioscan Ltd, which analyses the data collected by this group in 2021-22. This confirms the presence of the endangered Barbastelle bat on the lane, and confirms that the proposed mitigation falls short of what is required to protect an endangered species.

At our May 2022 meeting with EKFB (the contractor), they undertook to perform their own Bat Survey, and so we withheld our data to enable an unbiased comparison with their data. It now appears that EKFB did not produce any useful results, and so we are making our full survey available.
So how did HS2 miss the Bats ?
2.4.92 : The higher speeds at which driven transects are undertaken compared to walked surveys means that bat passes recorded during driven transects can become distorted and thus harder to detect accurately. This is accounted for when directly comparing the results from the two survey methods.”
2.4.108 : The driven transect (020-BA1-050-002) picked up low levels of activity across the route, with the assemblage consisting largely of common and soprano pipistrelles. Both these species were recorded in low to moderate numbers with peak counts of 169ppn for common pipistrelle in June and of 148ppn for soprano pipistrelle in April 2013. Myotis species, noctules and unidentified Nyctalus/Eptesicus were recorded in low numbers with peak counts of 11, 3 and 13ppn respectively.
(from ES volume 5 , Ecological Baseline data EC-003-002) See the CFA8-10 section, or the complete (archived) volume .
Leather Lane was ‘surveyed’ on six occasions between April and July 2013 – from a moving vehicle driving from Hartley Farm to Cottage Farm via Kings Lane ! They detected mostly pipistrelles (table 29), but where they were detected is not recorded in the document – did they really want to find them ?