A new solar farm will be built on the outskirts of Frome after plans were approved.

Wessex Solar Energy Ltd applied for permission to build the facility south of the A3098 Lodge Hill in Berkley.

Mendip District Council approved the plans when it met in Shepton Mallet on Wednesday evening (October 12).

The site is east of Frome, away from the A361 and around one mile from the Cranborne Chase area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). A new access road will be created from Lodge Hill.

Wessex Solar Energy already operates several other solar farms in Somerset.

Company director Richard Wearmouth said the facility would prove vital in securely meeting the UK’s future energy needs. He added the solar farm would be able to power up to 3,700 homes in the area.

Chris Da Costa, who lives over the border in Wiltshire, said that this was the wrong location for such a scheme.

He said: "The applicant claims the land was poor quality; this year, it contained a fine crop of barley.

"The AONB is very concerned that the effects of the development will be very much more obvious and intrusive than the documentation suggests."

Councillor Shannon Brooke said it was “crucially important” that solar farms were installed in appropriate locations which did not lead to the loss of valuable farmland.

In a statement, she said: "The scale and mass of commercialising Mendip’s green and pleasant land obviously has to be weighed up against the benefit of clean energy production.

"At 11 feet high, these panels are in my opinion too high."

Councillor Lucie Taylor-Hood said the benefits of the facility outweighed concerns about the impact it would have on the local landscape.

She said: "We’ve got something in front of us which is going to benefit Mendip, the country and the world.

"No one really wants these things on any kind of beautiful landscape, but we do need them."

Councillor Adam Boyden added: "This development alone would meet the electricity needs of about 8.5 per cent of the households in the whole district.

"We’ve declared a climate emergency, and we say a lot of nice things about that, but it seems to me that this is a decision we can take tonight to actually do something about it."