The company behind a huge solar farm planned within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is launching an appeal against Dorset Council’s decision to refuse planning permission.

Dorset councillors decided last week that despite it having the capacity to produce electricity for more than 4,700 homes, the 40-acre Cruxton Farm site near Maiden Newton would dominate the landscape and have a negative effect on a section of the national Macmillan Trail.

The applicant, clean energy solutions company Enviromena, said it was 'bitterly disappointed' that its 11.8 MW solar installation was rejected - in the face of a changing global climate and the biggest surge in UK household energy bills for more than 50 years.

Councillors upheld their planning officer’s recommendation for refusal on the grounds that the site did not meet criteria for development in an AONB and that its visual impact would prove detrimental to the landscape.

Mark Harding, European Development Director of Enviromena, said: “We are bitterly disappointed with the decision. We’ve worked very hard over the past 17 months while the project has been in the planning process to address all concerns.

“As a result, we shaped a scheme that has the full backing of the local parish council and kept visual impact to a minimum. At the meeting we sided with members of the committee who supported the scheme and highlighted the fact that the significant benefits of the project outweighed any perceived harmful visual impact from selected viewpoints.

“We fully believe that our submission met all of the criteria for development in the AONB. We will now proceed with an appeal to ensure an outcome which not only recognises the need to satisfy local conditions but supports the urgent national agenda of delivering sustainable, renewable energy.”

Enviromena’s CEO Cabell Fisher added: “We understand that there might be concerns with build projects. So with that in mind, Enviromena proposed extensive measures to ensure the site would be acceptable to all stakeholders. In fact, the local community recognised that projects like Enviromena’s can be connected quickly with minimal disruption and that they play a crucial role in providing much-needed clean energy alternatives to the grid."

He said the site would support the local economy and provide jobs during the construction phase. But the fact it had been refused left the company "with no option but to appeal”.

Planning officers, the Dorset CPRE, the AONB team and Natural England had all argued the scheme would cause harm to the AONB and that the developers had failed to make a case for why they could not build somewhere else.

There was some support - Bridport Green councillor Kelvin Clayton said at the meeting: “Much of this decision is subjective and I thought the impact was negligible.”

It was a view shared by Cllr Alex Brenton, although she said she did share the concerns about the impact on the Macmillan Trail, which runs from Lincolnshire to the coast at Abbotsbury.