This cutting of red tape has delighted business - and doubtless those wanting a roofextension, too - but green groups and civic groups fear that the new system has handed power to a quango from politicians and people.
Bats only have one young a year, and they don't have them every year, so if they were using your roof loft as their maternity roost and you knocked down the building or put in a loft extension, it would wipe out that whole population.
In green architecture news, word has just come out that Facebook has commissioned Bilbao-famed starchitect Frank Gehry to design a green extension to the Facebook Menlo Park campus - complete with a massive, walkable green roof!