SIR — I applaud the letter from Dave and Lena Lewis, who are well respected farmers in the Brendon Hills (Free Press May 17).

It is refreshing to find farmers who value their land as a beautiful asset and who have not been tempted to cover their fields with thousands of solar panels for money.

I agree with them that solar farms should be sited in a well thought-through way. There are suitable, but also inappropriate, sites where they will ruin our beautiful countryside.

In a speech to the Large Scale Solar Conference in April, the Minister for Climate Change said: "We want to see a lot more solar, but not at any cost, not in any place and not if it rides roughshod over the views of local communities.

"As we take solar to the next level, we must be thoughtful, sensitive to public opinion and mindful of the wider environmental and visual impacts."

Concerned about losing public support, he said: "If we aren't careful or if the sector expands inappropriately, that invaluable popular support will slip through our fingers.

"We don't want solar to become a bone of public contention like onshore wind."

He has already lost support in this part of Somerset, where we are being bombarded by large-scale solar farm applications in our countryside and some renewable energy companies are becoming incredibly insensitive as to where they are proposing them.

The Lewises said: "We are trampled on like ants" – I can tell you there are a lot of us "ants" out there feeling "very trampled upon"!

We hope the planners listen to local communities and only approve sensitively sited schemes, taking into account the wider environmental and visual impacts, as suggested by the Minister.

There are many applications for solar farms in the pipeline – too many for this small area – and hopefully the planning system can use planning policy to select only the most sensibly sited ones.

S James,

Lydeard St Lawrence.