Yorkshire-based battery storage company earmarks leafy Cleethorpes wildlife site for development

 

The land off Hewitts Avenue - home to songbirds such as whitethroats, linnets and bullfinches - is designated as a Local Wildlife Site but this may not save it from being developed

A NATURE-rich area on the outskirts of Cleethorpes has been earmarked for development.

A national company, Knaresborough-based Harmony Energy, is targeting land adjacent to the Northern Powergrid electricity plant off Hewitts Avenue in New Waltham as a potential depot for giant storage batteries.

Its agents say it intends to make up for the destruction  of wildlife habitat by planting native 12 trees and installing 20 nestboxes and  10 bat boxes.

By way of further compensation for loss of biodiversity, they say negotiations have begun with a farmer to buy a strip of land which would be given over to wildflowers. However, this deal has not been finalised.

The patch, located off Hewitt's Avenue, serves as a corridor  between the banks of the Buck Beck and a woodland with the latter, alas, also under threat of  development (as a holiday park).

Access to walkers is currently available via a path  running alongside the side of  The Pear Tree pub near the Tesco superstore, but no guarantee has been offered that this will be retained.

Although consent has not been granted for the development, contractors have already begun removing hedges in expectation that North East Lincolnshire Council will grant planning permission later this spring.

Neither Humberston Village Council nor New Waltham Parish Council have raised any objection to the scheme.

Even before planning consent has been granted,  the site has this month been part-cleared of shrubs and other vegetation

This photograph taken at another Harmony Energy site is what the company has in mind for land off Hewitts Avenue