Newt protection plans lodged for A55 charging station next to OK Diner
Great crested newts will be fenced out of land on the A55 at Ewloe before work starts on an electric vehicle charging station, under plans lodged with Flintshire County Council.
The site sits in the westbound services between junctions 33A and 33B, on grassland beside the OK Diner and the Shell garage, west of the A55 and A494 interchange.
Fastned UK Ltd already has planning permission for the charging station, granted on 27 February 2025.
Before it can build, it has to satisfy two conditions attached to that permission, one covering drainage that will not trap amphibians and one covering the spread of disease and invasive species.
The reason is Buckley.
Ecologists Enfys Ecology, who surveyed the site for Fastned, describe the town around 3km away as a stronghold for great crested newts, a species it is an offence to kill, injure or disturb.
There are records of the newts on the land immediately west of the site dating from 1996 to 2008, and three protected wildlife sites lie within a kilometre, including the Deeside and Buckley Newt Sites Special Area of Conservation.
The survey found a moderate risk to individual newts from the work.
The measures put forward run through every stage of construction.
One-way fencing goes up along the western boundary first, allowing anything already on the site to leave but nothing to come back.
Grass is cut in two stages, down to 10cm and then left for 24 hours so any newts have time to move off, before it is taken to ground level under the eye of a licensed ecologist.
No work happens between dusk and dawn.
Nothing is cleared during the winter, when amphibians are hibernating and would not move out of the way, and overnight temperatures have to stay above 5C for five nights before work and be forecast to stay there for five nights after.
Once the site is built, wildlife kerbs beside the road drains let newts bypass them, and ladders inside the gullies give an escape route to anything that falls in.
If a newt turns up while work is under way, everything stops.
Natural Resources Wales would then have to issue a licence before work could restart, a process the report puts at a minimum of 30 working days.
Flintshire County Council, acting as the body that signs off drainage schemes, approved the surface water system for the site on 16 July 2026.
The wildlife and biosecurity details went in on 21 July through agent DPP Planning and were registered by the council two days later.
Consultation is open and the council has set a target date of 17 September 2026 to decide.
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