The Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm is located west of

Lydd Lydd is a town and electoral ward in Kent, England, lying on Romney Marsh. It is one of the larger settlements on the marsh, and the most southerly town in Kent. Lydd reached the height of its prosperity during the 13th century, when it was a c ...

Romney Marsh Romney Marsh is a sparsely populated wetland area in the counties of Kent and East Sussex in the south-east of England. It covers about . The Marsh has been in use for centuries, though its inhabitants commonly suffered from malaria until th ...

. It was built by npower renewables and cost around £50 million. The 26

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each yea ...

s, each high, are distributed over an area of with peak generation of 59.8 MW.

Opposition to the windfarm

The site has proved controversial and has been opposed by parish, district and county councils, the local MP and other groups as detrimental to the visual appearance of the Marsh and a threat to wildlife. However, they were overruled by Central Government, and the turbines were erected in the period June - October 2008. The DTI indicated that a significant number of local people submitted comments in favour of the project, whilst a consistent 70% to 80% of the UK public support wind farms. Some local campaigners still oppose the development, attracting accusations of "rural nimbyism" and being under the "sinister" influence of the nuclear lobby. Conversely, campaigners for the siting attract accusations of "professional" self-interest and of hiding behind the

truism A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device, and is the opposite of falsism. In philosophy, a sentence which asserts incomplete truth conditio ...

that obviously renewable energy is beneficial. The RSPB, CPRE Kent and English Nature all objected to the use of this particular site as a wind farm on environmental grounds. The proximity of the site to the internationally important RSPB reserve and the land's status as an SSSI were particularly controversial.

References

{{Wind power in the United Kingdom Power stations in South East England Wind farms in England