NOISE from the M5 motorway is so bad on a Kempsey farm that it disturbs a family's sleep and prevents them from sitting in the garden.

Farmer Richard Williams is so fed up with the disturbance that he wants to build a 15ft-high soil bund along approximately 150 yards of his boundary to deaden the sound.

The huge bund around the edge of a field beside the house would be from 13 to 22 yards wide and would be planted with trees.

"We suffer terribly from motorway noise," Mr Williams told Kempsey Parish Council this week.

"It has got so bad recently that we have a job to use the back bedrooms. We suffer from loss of sleep some nights and an evening in the garden is not a pleasurable experience."

He said environmental health officers had told him the soil bund would reduce the noise by at least 50 per cent and possibly up to 75 per cent.

"It would make a drastic improvement to life on the farm," said Mr Williams, who proposes to have a contractor bring in the soil via Bestmans Lane, rather than Napleton Lane.

Kempsey planning chairman David Harrison commented that it would take 700 10-ton lorry loads or 350 20-ton loads to build the bund.

Parish councillors did not object in principle to the scheme but were worried about the damage it might cause to the roads, with heavy vehicles making so many journeys.

They suggested that the work should be done during normal working hours, the material used should be stable and inert and any damage to the verges should be made good when the work was finished.

Mr Harrison said the motorway had been raised two metres above the level of the fields and most of Kempsey could hear the traffic.

"I would like to see this bund put all along the motorway," he said.

The planning application has still to be considered by Malvern Hills District Council.