Progress is marching on and the town's skyline will soon be transformed with new buildings, roads, factories and homes.

But despite talk of new jobs, facilities and multi-million pound investments, the needs of the tiny water vole must, by law, be taken into account before a single brick can be laid.

Reporter DAISY WALLAGE investigates why these furry "water rats" need protecting.

WATER voles were once a familiar countryside sight, but the species has suffered one of the most devastating declines of any British mammal this century.

The last 30 years in particular have seen numbers drop dramatically and it is thought water voles have been lost from roughly 90 per cent of the sites where they were once present.

With many of the surviving populations fragmented and under threat from a number of quarters, it has become even more important that planners and developers take their needs into account.

Steve Henson, a Norfolk Wildlife Trust conservation officer, said: "They have declined right across the country and in some places the decline has been very, very marked, to the point where only a handful of colonies remain.

"In other places they have died out completely."

Lynn is part of a national stronghold of water voles stretching across East Anglia, living in both rural and urban areas, and this explains why they have cropped up in a number of recent planning applications.

Mr Henson, who works with rivers and wetlands, said: "In East Anglia, including Norfolk, there is still a very strong population. The segment of countryside from the Humberside down to Essex probably supports around one quarter to a third of the national water vole population.

"There is an amazingly strong population on the edge of The Fens, stretching down from The Wash to the Cambridge border, to the south of Downham, and there is a colossal network of dykes and ditches supporting them.

"The population stretches out towards Lynn and other parts of West Norfolk and they can usually be found in any suitable water sources.

"Urban areas have crept up on them, enveloping and engulfing the areas where they occur.