Great crested newts have become the scourge of any developer looking to build anything after establishing its last stronghold in the Red Rose county.

Experts planning a massive new business park, creating more than 1,000 jobs on the Preston East Employment Area near the M6, are the latest people to discover Triturus cristatus – as they are known in Latin – on their land.

In recent months, a scheme to build a new depot for Spar firm James Hall and Sons, and for a United Utilities electricity sub-station on the same site, have run into similar small and slimey problems.

Now, Preston's deputy mayor, Coun Bill Tyson, has called for the newts to be taken off the protected species list. Their protected status means that every development site on which they are found is beset by delays as experts search every ditch and pond for them and then rehome any they discover.

Coun Tyson said: "We have got that many newts in this county now I do not know where we put them all.
"I think it is time we took them off this protected species list, they seem to be everywhere."

However, the body appointed to protect the newts disagrees.

Heather McMorland, of Natural England, said: "The newts are a blessing or a curse, it depends which you look at it, but the bottom line is we have a duty to the future of Europe to protect these beautiful little creatures in the last place they exist.

"In other parts of the world they have been killed off by the destruction of their habitat and we have to stop that happening here – even if it does keep the bulldozers away for a bit."