Ren's Wildlife Hospital planning application

Can you please help?

Just a few weeks ago Protect the Wild was delighted to send Ren’s Wildlife Hospital in Holderness (East Yorkshire) a donation from our Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund - see Helping Wildlife in Holderness.

Now they need our help again - and this time it’s with emailing in support of a planning application that is right up against its deadline!

Ren’s has been up and running for many years and helps a huge variety of animals. They are the only hospital in East Yorkshire that rehabs foxes and deer, and they plan to work with badgers in the future too.

Like many a well-loved but scarce community resource, as word has spread they have found themselves in much demand with more and more animals being brought to them. More animals means they need more space!

Rehabbed fox cub in ‘soft release enclosure’ before release back into the wild. Image Ren’s Wildlife Hospital

Almost eighteen months ago now Ren’s put in a planning application to use land they owned at Winestead to help local wildlife.

The hospital has huge local support (bar for a few local NIMBYs who claim they ‘love wildlife’ but are opposed for reasons they really don’t appear to have thought through - eg “we're also worried about animal noise and how this will affect the country wild life” and “There's lots of wildlife like deers, squirrels, rabbits, badgers, stoats, pheasants ect which this 'sanctuary' will disrupt”). What should have been a pretty straightforward application, though, has been bogged down. As Ren’s say on their Facebook page “the Council keep coming back with queries which we feel we’ve already answered or are totally irrelevant”.

How can we help?

Ren’s are asking for our support - not with a cash donation (though we’re sure that would be welcome!) but with an email.

To quote again from the Ren’s Wildlife Hospital Facebook page:

We are asking for your support. Please will you write a one or two-line email saying how valuable a Wildlife Hospital would be to the community.

There are two ways to do this:-

1. Probably the easiest is to send an email to the planning officer and copy in the admin department

Daniel Allen: Daniel.allen@eastriding.gov.uk

Planning admin: planning@eastriding.gov.uk

PLEASE be sure to include the following as the subject line

TITLE: Land And Trees North West Of White Cottage, Patrington Road, Winestead

Planning Reference: 21/04565/PLF

2. The other way is to follow this link to the planning department

https://newplanningaccess.eastriding.gov.uk/.../applicati...

It will involve registering & logging in, but it is quite straightforward.

Thank you for your help

Urgent

• The deadline for the application is January 1st. Given the closure of the council’s offices over the upcoming holidays if you can send an email it really needs to be today or tomorrow.

Ren’s told us that the emails that may probably carry the most weight would be from people who live near the land in Winestead, the area of Holderness in which it is situated, or in the East Riding of Yorkshire - but that “it would be great” to have support from other areas. Well of course it would!

Please ask the councillors to give the gift of approval to Ren’s this holiday season!

Thank you very much indeed.