Biodiversity officer Elliot Newton outlines the planet’s need for bug homes and insect and bird-friendly planting to counter the Earth’s mass extinction ecological crisis.

He was speaking after the mayor, Cllr Diane White, officially opened the Burney Bug Hotel in Surbiton, at the Burney Triangle – the green space at the junction of Burney Avenue and Ferguson Avenue.

Built by bug hotel expert Tom Hooker of Surbiton’s Wild Reclamation, the artistically beautiful yet thoroughly functional insect and bee home is topped and tailed by flowerbeds full of native plants of special appeal to bees.

Residents in the surrounding homes, who have been following the progress of the hotel’s building with interest, are undertaking to keep the beds watered.

There are also nesting boxes, a hedgehog safehouse, bird feeder and woodcut representations of some of the potential residents, including earthworms, solitary bees and moths.