DEVELOPERS are seeking planning permission for a home from home it has already built – for water voles.

The retrospective application to City of York Council for land at Germany Beck, Fulford, comes as the firm hopes to start work on building hundreds of homes for humans this summer.

Documents submitted to the authority said it wanted to conserve and enhance the population of water voles at the site.

They said the firm was seeking consent to conserve the animals by displacing them from construction areas and providing a new wetland habitat.

It also wanted to provide a refuge from flooding by means of a raised island within the new wetland habitat.

“There will be some temporary effects on water voles, but these will be reversed through habitat restoration and, given the timescales, these effects are unlikely to have a significant adverse effect,” they said.

Work on the vole habitat was carried out under a licence from Natural England.