YORK housebuilder Persimmon Homes is seeking planning permission for a home from home it has already built in York… 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 them by displacing them from construction areas and providing a new wetland habitat within Germany Lane meadows.

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.

Simon Usher, managing director at Persimmon Homes Yorkshire, told The Press that the works to create a water vole habitat had been carried out under a licence issued by Natural England.

“The work was supervised by an independent, qualified ecologist - including a leading expert on water voles,” he said.

“The habitat which has been created will help to conserve and enhance the water vole population ensuring that this species, which is in decline nationally, can thrive in the local area.”

He added that water voles were not present at Germany Beck at the time that planning permission for the housing development was granted, and the company was now ‘simply formalising the situation.’

The Press reported on Friday that Persimmon finally hoped to make a start on building 655 homes on the Germany Beck site - with 227 of them affordable - by August.

The company also said it had started roadworks to create a junction onto the A19 for an access road into the site, which will raise the height of the main road and reduce the risk of it being blocked by flooding from the River Ouse and the beck.

The scheme, one of York’s biggest housing developments, has been beset by delays and controversy, relating to fears of increased traffic in the area and also to claims that the 1066 Battle of Fulford took place on part of the site and it should be protected from the bulldozer.