A major Somerset employer can now expand and streamline its operations after plans were approved following a two-year wait.

Charlie Bigham's, which produces premium ready-to-eat meals, has its food production campus in Dulcote Quarry, just outside the city of Wells.

The company applied in July 2022 to expand its campus, allowing its existing kitchens to be extended and its dispatch operations to be streamlined.

Two years on, Somerset Council has finally given the go-ahead to these proposals, with construction expected to begin in a matter of months.

Under the agreed proposals, the existing kitchen area will be extended by 15 metres to "optimise the production process" and allow for greater energy efficiency.

A new dispatch building will also be created to the east, with new offices and storage facilities being created.

A spokesman for Pentadel (representing the company) said: "The new building is required for both the intake and storage of packaging material, and the sorting, packing, storage and dispatch of finished meals.

"Additional office space is required to support the phase one production kitchen offices along with plant, toilets and changing facilities.

"The overall number of heavy goods vehicles visiting the site will be reduced by introducing a logistics and consolidation area, which removes the necessity of intermediary off-site consolidation, and allows deliveries direct to the final

destination.

"The kitchen extension is required to package meals and stitch together the dispatch and production facilities – this will facilitate full automation of the packing process, and will be delivered before the new central dispatch building.

"There will be no increase in traffic to and from the site and importantly no loss of jobs at the kitchen, as the roles the automation will take over will be re-utilised throughout other processes."

The Charlie Bigham site lies just off the busy A371 Bishop's Park Way, which connects Wells to the neighbouring town of Shepton Mallet.

The Strawberry Line multi-user path runs past its front gate following an extension to the Wells section of the active travel route, which opened to the public in March 2022.

A further extension as far as Churchill Batch Lane opened in August, with the Strawberry Line's volunteers and contractors currently working with local landowners and National Highways to deliver the remaining sections up to the western edge of Shepton Mallet.

Strawberry Line Society trustee Richard Jones stated in early-August: "I know from Charlie Bigham's themselves that quite a few of their workers now use the path coming from Wells – but they said most of their workforce lives in Shepton Mallet, so once it opens up all the way it will be life-changing."

The food campus expansion plans were approved through the delegated powers of the council's planning officers, rather than a public decision by its planning committee east (which handles major applications within the former Mendip area).

Construction work on the expansion is expected to get under way before the end of the year.