Our fundraising appeal reaches a milestone – but donations still needed

Our crowdfunding appeal to save the beautiful countryside on the edge of Frome from development has reached a major milestone – but we still need your help, please.

In April, we launched a crowdfunder appeal to raise funds for a legal letter, challenging the Selwood Garden Community proposal.  Within a few weeks, we reached our target, which is just brilliant.  Thank you to everyone who has donated.

We are trying to save a huge swathe of beautiful countryside on the edge of Frome, from an application to build 1700 homes, two care homes, new roads and employment land, drive through takeaway and other edge-of-town development. If it goes ahead, the landscape setting of Frome will be destroyed. This ancient town and nearby villages will be swamped with traffic.

The decision about whether this massive development will go ahead will be made by a Planning Inspector, following a public inquiry in August 2025.

Thanks to your donations, we have now submitted our legal letter, written by a Planning Lawyer from Landmark Chambers, to the Planning Inspector.

Why we are fighting this development

This landscape is special – but we need an expert to prove it!

The landscape of the River Frome valley is beautiful. You can see for yourself in our gallery of landscape photographs below. This is the green lungs of Frome.  A landscape of green fields and hedges, and ancient lanes for walking, horse-riding and cycling.

Believe it or not, we need independent, expert evidence to prove this to the Planning Inspector!  That is why we are keeping our Crowdfunder appeal open so that we can raise more funds to help pay for an independent Landscape Report which we can submit to the Inquiry. We have joined forces with local leader, Cllr Michael Dunk, to commission a report by MacGregor Smith Architects This report will be submitted as evidence and will compliment and support the legal case made in the legal letter we commissioned from Landmark Chambers.

Please help

We are a small, independent charity based in Somerset and we are working with the local community and local leaders to fight this development. It can feel like we are in a “David and Goliath” situation when taking on large developers, but it is not impossible, and we have won significant cases before! We will be speaking ourselves at the Public Inquiry in our capacity as an interested party. Our best chance of winning this battle is to provide clear evidence as to why this awful development should be refused.

Just like the legal letter, this new report is not cheap, coming in at £2400 plus VAT. We have agreed to fund half of these costs, using the extra donations received from the appeal, which were above our original target, (which was £3000). The remaining funds are not yet covered.

We are therefore keeping the appeal open for a while longer and we will be immensely grateful for any further donations.

Please give a donation, however small, to help us fight this dreadful proposal.

Let’s stop SGC and protect this beautiful countryside, so cherished by the people of Frome.

Donate to our appeal

Thank you.