A bid to create another solar farm in Herefordshire has passed a key hurdle.

Frome Valley Solar requested a decision on whether an environmental impact assessment (EIA) would be required for its scheme to create a solar farm on 72 acres of farmland to the west of the unlabelled road running north from the hamlet of Stoke Edith, to the east of Hereford, at the point where it crosses the Hereford-Ledbury railway line.

EIAs are detailed analyses of the environmental impacts of larger infrastructure projects, effectively setting a higher bar for the assurances they must provide.

RELATED NEWS:

But county planners have now ruled it “unlikely” that the proposal, “in isolation or in combination, would result in significant effects on the environment by virtue of factors such as its nature, size or location”.

What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

Lying immediately south of the river Frome, it would not be “of more than local importance in terms of its environmental and ecological effects”, which could be assessed and addressed within the usual process of dealing with planning applications, the planners concluded.

OTHER NEWS:

Such an application is now expected to be submitted.

The scheme would be around two-thirds the size of the recent solar farm development also alongside the river Frome roughly a mile to the southwest, between Dormington and Mordiford.

There is currently no company named Frome Valley Solar listed at Companies House.