Bats 1 Insulation Company 0

The saga of wall cavity insulation and bats in the Netherlands has just seen a major precedence set following a landmark ruling.

A court found that insulation company Best didn’t do enough to check whether bats could have been living in the wall cavity of a house they insulated and this will affect other companies in the future.

The argument put forward by an ecological group is that If an owner of an existing house wants to insulate the cavity walls, he must first have sufficient ecological research carried out to determine whether bats can live in these walls.

According to the Council of State website, it found that the company had violated its duty of care under the Nature Conservation Act with its working method, which included an endoscopic examination (where a camera is used to look into the cavity walls).

It concluded that the company did not do enough research into the presence of bats in cavity walls in this way.

So worried was the Court about the need to come to the correct decision that rather rely simply on statements from the litigant and defendant that it approached 46 individuals and associations for their opinion on the matter as the final ruling would then be likely to affect the future of cavity wall insulation in the Netherlands.

Bats are a protected species and this decision means that a simple one-off exploration with a camera is insufficient and that if there appear to be any possibility of access to roof or wall by bats, then further observation must be carried out before further work is carried out.

It is also argued that because some species are very small, they may be hidden from view by pipes or old insulation material and that external bat nesting boxes are not an acceptable alternative.

Unless this decision is overturned at some stage in the future, the 1.5 million households due to benefit from government grants to increase insulation to their walls could find themselves having a much longer wait than expected.