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Your tax well spent: Council spends £60k to relocat e four newts

Clearly wisdom, intelligence and any inkling of fiscal responsibility
do not come into the equation when Councils decide which muppets to
hire.

Government-run councils need to be scrapped in favour of private
management agencies who compete laissez-faire against each other.

Down with wasteful bureaucracies.

Council's £60,000 to relocate four newts

Last Updated: 1:20am GMT 15/02/2008

Legislation protecting an endangered species of newt is to be
challenged after a council was forced to spend £60,000 moving four of
the creatures.

Officials at Cheshire County Council are writing to the Government and
European Union chiefs to challenge the rules governing great crested
newts.

Councillor Barrie Hardern, who has written to Hilary Benn, the
Secretary of State for the Department for Environment Food and Rural
Affairs, said the newts had to be given a new habitat as a part of a
planning application for building work at Fallibroome High School in
Macclesfield.

He said: "Around £15,000 per newt seems a ludicrous sum of money to
me.

"They are a legally protected species under EU regulations because
there are parts of Europe where they are quite rare.

"However, in Cheshire we have in the order of 16,000 ponds and newts
are widespread and locally abundant.

"The EU regulations together with UK legislation carry substantial
fines if we do not protect the newts as part of planning applications.
I am very concerned about taxpayers' money being used in this way."

Great crested newts (Triturus cristatus) are Britain's largest newt
species, they can live for 27 years and grow up to 17cm long.

They are black with orange or yellow bellies with black blotches, and
can be found across northern Europe.

When great crested newts are encountered during a proposed
development, they are caught by specialists either by fencing off a
compound and using a torch to find them at night or by using pit fall
traps. They are then relocated to safe areas.

There are estimated to be 400,000 great crested newts in the UK in
18,000 breeding sites.

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