Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie have won a two-year battle for permission to overhaul their Tudor estate in Suffolk which risked being derailed by Britain’s commonest bat.
The Game of Thrones stars wanted to install new gates to protect their privacy at their £1.75million home in Brettenham, Suffolk.
But it was their plan to convert a 15th century barn on the 8.2 acre estate into accommodation for guests which sparked an unfriendly response from planning officers concerned at the impact on a colony of bats already living there.
Ecological consultants had demanded ‘at least one bat emergence survey’ this summer after a ‘bat scoping assessment’ recorded 39 sightings of the protected common pipistrelle on three separate occasions in 2022.
But planning officers at Babergh District Council batted off concerns when the celebrity couple agreed to modify another nearby barn to become a ‘compensation roost’.
‘Ecology is satisfied that there is sufficient ecological information to determine the application, subject to conditions,’ officers wrote in their delegated report.
The couple who met on the set of the hit HBO series moved onto the estate in 2017 after the area was recommended to them by their friend Ed Sheeran.
But they submitted a series of plans to modify the Grade II listed home after complaining that their privacy and security had been ‘continuously breached’, by fans peeping in on them.
Their request to convert the barn also fell foul of the district council’s environmental team concerned about potential land contamination.
They asked for a ‘desk study undertaken by an appropriately qualified Geo-environmental consultant’ to investigate ‘potentially contaminated sites’.
‘This report should comprise of an overview of previous uses of the site as well as current site conditions as demonstrated through a site walkover and an assessment of risk by a technically competent person,’ officers demanded.
The 2022 assessment by Place Services also discovered that bats had established day roosts, hibernation roosts and one feeding roosts on the estate alongside its swimming pool, stables, tennis court and croquet lawn.
Bat species and their roosts are protected in Britain under Regulation 43 of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017.
But in their latest report, planning officers stated that while the planned restoration ‘will result in the loss of roosts for bats, it is proposed that the large storage barn within the site could be modified to become a compensation roost’.
The couple promised to minimise light pollution and protect roost areas in their revised plans.
Planning officers said all the mitigation measures should be carried out in accordance with the proposals lodged.