A forklift truck tipped over with its driver inside at a Bath nature reserve where controversial houses are planned.
The vehicle ended up on its side on the afternoon of 10th August on the track to Englishcombe Lane’s “tufa field”, a nature reserve in Bath which Bath and North East Somerset Council has controversial plans to partially build on.
Paramedics took the driver to hospital after the incident, but the man who called the ambulance said that he understood his injuries were minor and he had been discharged that night.
Simon Banks runs the Tufa Field website — tufafield.com — which blogs about the nature reserve and campaigns to protect the site. He lives near the site and said: “There was an almighty crash.”
He said that he went out to help and called an ambulance after speaking to the driver, who was in the cab.
The forklift was with contractors who are on the site to carry out geological surveys ahead of a planning application.
They are not on-site to start the development, which still has to go through the planning permission process.
Mr Banks said: “[The council] had agreed they were going to do that in November … We were surprised when these guys turned up.”
The council’s plans to build on part of the field have been highly controversial due to the presence of tufa, a rare limestone formation which forms part of an important habitat.
Mr Banks said he was upset nettle patches were being cut down as part of the survey work, as they were an important feeding and breeding ground for butterflies.
A spokesperson for the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We were called at 14:15 to an incident in Bath.
“We sent a rapid response vehicle and a double-crewed land ambulance to the scene. One patient was conveyed by land to Royal United Hospital.”
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter