← All guides · Wildlife & law · Updated June 2026 · Richard Lim

Nesting, bats, and the cliff at Kingsdown.

Between 1 March and 31 August most garden birds are nesting. Cutting an active nest, or disturbing it enough that the parents abandon it, is a criminal offence under section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Fine: up to £5,000 per nest, and up to six months in prison. That is the baseline for any hedge job across the whole country. In Deal, and especially on the Kingsdown clifftop, a second layer of rules applies too: bat-roost protection, SSSI adjacency, and chalk-grassland species care.

The core rule: section 1 of the WCA 1981.

It is an offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while that nest is in use or being built. In practice, that means for the March-to-August window I do not cut a hedge until I have looked for active nests. If I find one, the job is deferred to after the young have fledged. If the hedge is being cut anyway during the season and a nest is spotted mid-cut, work stops.

"Intentional" in the Act has been interpreted broadly. Ignoring an obvious nest and cutting anyway counts. So does cutting without checking when it was reasonable to check. The safest working practice, and mine, is a competent visual check of the whole hedge before the shears start, every time, in season.

Bats: even stronger protection, and it does not switch off.

All UK bat species are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (section 9) and, more strictly, under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (regulation 43). The Regulations protect a bat roost whether or not there is a bat in it at the time. You cannot damage or destroy a roost, disturb a bat, or block a roost access point, even in winter with no bat present.

Bats are a European Protected Species. Where a hedge job might affect a roost (typically because the hedge runs alongside a mature tree with cavities, or against an outbuilding wall with tile gaps) you need a licence from Natural England before the work goes ahead. This is an EPS licence, and it requires an ecological survey by a licensed bat consultant.

Around Deal, roosts are most likely in mature Walmer villa gardens with old trees, cottage outbuildings inside the Middle Street CA, and the cliffside barns at Kingsdown. On a routine seafront tamarisk trim, roost impact is very unlikely. On a job that means taking down a mature hollow-boughed holly, or working close to an old cottage eaves, I flag it.

The Kingsdown-to-Dover-Cliffs SSSI.

The Kingsdown to Dover Cliffs SSSI runs straight off the top of the beach here, south from Kingsdown along the White Cliffs toward St Margaret's Bay and Dover. It protects the chalk-grassland habitat above the cliff, its associated invertebrate and bird species, and the geology of the cliff face itself.

Two things this changes for a cliff-top hedge job:

• Chalk-grassland species care. The grassland immediately adjacent to the hedge line is a legally protected habitat. Bringing arisings, machinery or fuel onto SSSI grass without care can damage the sward. On plots that back directly onto SSSI, I keep everything on the garden side of the boundary and hand-carry rather than tracking machines across.
• No winter machine access on soft cliff edges. The cliff-top ground here is soft in winter. Running a chipper or a tracked machine along a boundary within a few metres of the cliff edge in wet weather is asking for trouble. I schedule cliff-adjacent jobs for drier ground conditions and work by hand near the edge.

The wider protection picture is heavy at this end of the coast. Sandwich & Pegwell Bay National Nature Reserve, roughly six miles north of Deal, carries a full stack of designations: SSSI, SPA, SAC, Ramsar and NNR. Walmer Castle gardens are a Grade I registered heritage landscape. None of these apply directly to a residential Deal hedge, but they set the tone for what "reasonable care" looks like locally.

Which months I actually cut.

My default working schedule for Deal:

• September to end February: full cutting season. No nesting concerns, ground conditions usually workable, machinery unrestricted.
• March to end August: nesting season. I still take jobs, but each one gets a survey-first walk. If the hedge is clear, we cut. If I find a nest, we defer. Formative cuts on young hedges (below nest-holding density) are usually fine to proceed on.
• May, June, July: the peak of the nesting season. I lean strongly toward deferring these unless the hedge is genuinely too young or too open to hold a nest, or the client accepts a hand-cut, section-by-section approach that stops the moment anything active is spotted.

Winter cliff-top work at Kingsdown gets its own overlay: dry-ground condition only, no tracked machinery near the edge, arisings carried away from the SSSI side.

When I say no.

Three situations where I will decline or defer a Deal hedge job.

• Active nest found mid-quote. Job deferred until fledging plus a fortnight, minimum.
• Bat roost suspected on an adjoining tree or building. Job paused pending a Natural England-licensed bat consultant survey and, if needed, an EPS licence.
• Cliff-adjacent job in soft-ground winter conditions. Rescheduled to dry ground. I will not track a chipper along a wet cliff-top boundary.

Deferring a job is cheaper than paying a £5,000 fine, and much cheaper than an EPS-related prosecution. I would rather come back in six weeks and cut the same hedge on the same terms than get either of us in front of Natural England or the magistrates.

Sources: Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 sections 1 and 9; Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 regulation 43; Natural England guidance on European Protected Species licensing for bats; Kingsdown to Dover Cliffs SSSI citation and unit-level condition assessments (Natural England); Sandwich & Pegwell Bay NNR designation register; Historic England register entry for Walmer Castle gardens.