Digging and Clearing for a Garden Gym in England: What Natural England Says About Badgers, Great Crested Newts and Reptiles

A garden gym involves clearing vegetation, moving piles of wood or rubble and excavating for a base, all of which can affect wildlife that is protected by law. This article summarises Natural England’s guidance on three groups that can be overlooked, badgers, great crested newts and reptiles, and applies it to typical garden gym groundworks. The guidance applies to England only. It is general information, not legal or ecological advice, and it does not cover bats and nesting birds, which are dealt with in this site’s guide to bats and nesting birds when converting a garage or building a garden gym. Natural England’s badger and great crested newt pages were last updated in 2015, and its reptile advice in April 2025.

Badgers and their setts

Natural England says badgers and their setts, the tunnels and chambers where they live, are protected by law. Offences include damaging, destroying or blocking access to a sett and disturbing badgers in a sett. The guidance says a person found guilty of any of these offences could be sent to prison for up to six months and receive an unlimited fine.

The guidance lists activities that can harm badgers, including noise, additional lighting or vibration, excavation, lighting fires, using chemicals, and tree felling and timber extraction. A licence may be available from Natural England if disturbance cannot be avoided, but the applicant must show that everything else possible has been tried to avoid affecting badgers, and expert help is needed for a licence application connected with a development. The guidance says a licence is usually not needed for work with hand tools or machinery close to a sett, or clearing vegetation near setts, if it is unlikely to disturb a badger in its sett or damage the sett, and that felling small trees or shrubs is included provided they are not uprooted and do not block access to the sett.

Great crested newts

Natural England describes the great crested newt as a European protected species, whose animals, eggs, breeding sites and resting places are protected. The guidance lists activities that would break the law, including capturing, killing, disturbing or injuring newts, deliberately damaging or destroying a breeding or resting place, and obstructing access to resting or sheltering places, whether deliberately or by not taking enough care. Each offence can bring an unlimited fine and up to six months in prison.

Activities it says can harm newts include removing dense vegetation and disturbing the ground, removing materials such as dead wood piled on the ground, excavating the ground, for example to renovate a building, and filling in ponds or other water bodies. The guidance notes that in many cases harm can be avoided by adjusting plans, advises contacting an ecologist, and says a mitigation licence from Natural England is available if harm cannot be avoided.

The guidance also covers pond management. It says many standard pond management jobs do not need a licence but need careful planning, that work should normally take place in late autumn through winter, typically early November to late January, and that summer work will almost certainly need a licence. It advises surveying the pond and the area around it before starting, and stopping work immediately if newts are found when working without a licence. This matters for anyone whose garden gym site is near a garden pond.

Reptiles

Natural England’s standing advice, written for local planning authorities, says smooth snakes and sand lizards are European protected species, and that other native reptiles, namely adders, grass snakes, common or viviparous lizards and slow worms, are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which makes it an offence to intentionally kill or injure them. The advice says reptiles can occur in a wide range of habitats, including grassland, scrub and brownfield sites, and that an absence of a record does not mean there are no reptiles: it could mean there is no survey data for that location.

Survey work, it says, can include searching for basking animals on banks, piles of wood and edges of woodland, and on and under artificial refuges such as corrugated iron sheets or roofing felt. That is relevant to a garden where old sheeting, timber or felt is stored. The advice says development proposals should avoid effects on reptiles where possible, for example by changing the layout, timing or working methods, and lists measures such as temporary reptile fencing and cutting vegetation in stages during the active season, which the advice describes as April to September. Translocation is described as a last resort.

Applying this to a garden gym site

• Look for signs of a sett, a pond or old timber and sheeting piles before clearing the site.
• Where excavation, vegetation clearance or moving stored materials is planned, consider timing and method, as the guidance suggests.
• If newts are found during unlicensed pond work, the guidance says to stop work immediately, and it advises contacting an ecologist where harm may be unavoidable.
• Check other constraints on the same ground, such as knotweed, covered in this site’s guide to clearing ground for a garden gym, and buried services, covered in the guide to digging foundations.

Frequently asked questions

Is a licence usually needed to clear vegetation near a badger sett?

Natural England says a licence is usually not needed for clearing vegetation near setts if this is unlikely to disturb a badger in its sett or damage the sett.

When is the safer time to work near a garden pond?

For standard pond management, Natural England says late autumn through winter, typically early November to late January, is when great crested newts are least likely to be present in ponds.

The bottom line

Natural England’s guidance treats badgers, great crested newts and native reptiles as protected in England, lists excavation, clearance and disturbance of stored materials as activities that can harm them, and points to avoidance, careful timing and an ecologist as the first steps, with licences only where harm cannot be avoided. A garden gym site that includes a sett, a pond or undisturbed piles of timber deserves a check before groundwork starts.

Sources

• Natural England and Defra, “Badgers: protection and licences” (GOV.UK)
• Natural England, “Great crested newts: protection and licences” (GOV.UK)
• Natural England, “Reptiles: advice for making planning decisions” (GOV.UK)