I have a friend who used to do Bat Care Stuff & I don't know about the Channel, but bats & rabies is a thing. A very rare thing, and seemingly only in Daubenton's bats, but it does happen -- Bat Conservation Trust say 15 bats found since 1986 with the relevant strain of the virus, out of 15,000 tested, and sadly a bat worker in Scotland died in 2002. These days bat workers are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated.

This does not, of course, mean that the Express story was necessarily true.