Wham Bat! Andrew Ridgeley’s building plans scuppered by protected species of bats
Andrew Ridgeley's efforts to build a new home have been blocked by bats.
The 60-year-old singer wants to demolish a barn and build a new house at his farm in Cornwall - but the property is currently being used as a roost for bats, which are a protected species in the UK.
Andrew - who is best known for performing alongside George Michael in Wham! - had hoped to replace a disused garage with a three-bedroom property.
The pop star has applied to the local council for planning permission. However, he will also need to apply for a special licence from Natural England before construction work can begin, according to the Daily Mail newspaper.
Andrew moved to Monaco and then on to Los Angeles after the break-up of Wham!. However, he returned to the UK in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, the pop star previously confessed that Wham! weren't meant to last.
Andrew also believes that George - who died in 2016, aged 53 - needed to become a solo artist in order to realise his true potential.
He told Smooth Radio: "Wham! was always conceived as a project that ... well, it wasn’t conceived as a short-term project, but it became very apparent to us that it was always going to be a short-term project because it represented us and our youth. And it was an expression of our youth.
"And neither of us could see us taking that into proper adulthood. 'Bad Boys' wasn’t going to be something that we were going to be standing on stage doing at 40 years old. We understood that that wasn’t going to happen.
"But also, George’s songwriting was evolving and developing in a way, and at a pace, that the constraints and parameters imposed by Wham! and what it represented - i.e. youth and exuberance and vitality - were constraints that wouldn’t allow his songwriting to develop, or for him to develop as an artist as he wanted to, and as he was going to."
