SOLAR panels and air source heat pumps have been approved for a site on the edge of Dorchester's Borough Gardens.

The town council has been given planning consent for the roof panels and pumps to be added to the Borough Gardens House and an adjacent outbuilding.

They will help provide light and heat for the main building and an adjoining potting shed and greenhouse at the southern corner of the Gardens – assisting in growing thousands of plants for the town.

Twenty-six solar panels are planned on four roof areas of the Borough Gardens House and an extension.

The changes are part of the town council's green strategy which has already seen it swop petrol and diesel-powered machines for electric powered devices and pick-ups and add solar panels to several of the buildings it owns. It has also installed its own water boreholes in the Borough Gardens and Weymouth Avenue recreation group to keep water bills down and installed a bio-mass boiler in the Corn Exchange.

The solar panels and heat pumps will provide power for the leased first floor residential flat at the Borough Gardens House as well as for the ground floor community room, available for hire, and a basement used for storage. An additional pump will be added to an outbuilding immediately behind the house.

The town council estimates that the solar panels should produce up to 10,400kw hours of power each year, more than half of the building's requirements, with the air source air pumps making an additional contribution by reducing the amount of kilowatt hours needed to heat the house and the adjoining greenhouses.