I posted about my trip on Twitter.

An old mate, Choel, who lived two floors beneath me in the flats and still lives locally now, got in touch to say the hedgehogs were gone.

The council had signed a private finance initiative (PFI) with a company to manage the area.

They felled trees, paved over gardens and bulldozed the small park with the cherry trees.

They built the residents an allotment, but erected a huge fence around it, meaning hedgehogs couldn't get in or out.

She sent me photos of entire gardens in skips, of upended trees in full blossom with bird feeders still hanging from their branches.

She told me she had found 10 dead hedgehogs, and others out in the day and underweight.

Eventually, she started rehoming them, going out at night and rounding them up to take to a rescue centre, where they were fed and watered before being released somewhere they actually had a chance of living.

She regrets leaving it so long before she acted; she wishes she could have saved the ones that died.

But she did save seven.