Solar farm the 'size of 40 football pitches' approved

The site of the solar farm in Poulshot, near Devizes in Wiltshire

A solar farm, the size of 40 football pitches, could be built near a small rural village.

Devizes Solar Ltd - a subsidiary of London-based Ampyr Solar Europe - has been granted planning permission to build a 13.5 megawatt set of solar panels on land near Poulshot in Wiltshire.

The Council for the Protection of Rural England claimed the proposals were "not in the right place" and "would transform open farmland into an industrial zone."

Applicant Michael Breslaw said the solar farm would "provide 5,000 homes a year with clean electricity," while his agent, Martin Pollard, said the scheme would "deliver much-needed benefits with minimal landscape and visual impacts."

A landscape officer told Wiltshire Council he had checked the proposed site against a checklist of nine criteria and found only two met the threshold of concern.

Nick Stokes, of Worton Parish Council, added he was concerned that construction access would be via the C20, an "extremely busy road which is used by traffic from Salisbury to the south and Melksham and Chippenham to the north as a cut-through to avoid Devizes."

Councillor Nick Holder proposed adding a condition to planning consent that there should be consultation with parish councils over the construction traffic management plan.

Wiltshire councillors permitted the application by five votes to three with one abstention.

The development, which would take around six months to construct, would include four banks of 'tracker' solar panels that follow the sun throughout the day.

A substation would be built to the north of the site and an underground cable would carry the generated power 1.8 km north east to the electricity grid.