Appeals against Berwick Borough Council's refusal of planning permission for three wind farm proposals are due to be heard in late April next year - almost a month after the authority has ceased to exist. Members of the council's policy committee were told the planning inspectorate had agreed that all three appeals should be heard in a single inquiry, and had initially offered a start date of February 10 next year.

Noise control officers may be powerless to stop work on a wind farm causing sleepless nights for residents. People living on the seafront in Clacton and Holland-on-Sea have been woken up in the early hours by thudding, drilling and vibrations. The noise is being caused by building work at a new wind farm at Gunfleet Sands, 9km off the coast of Clacton.

Controversial plans for a wind farm on top of a scenic wilderness has come under fresh attacks from worried residents. Energy firm nPower wants to put up 19 turbines - some as high as 400ft - on Mynydd-y-Gwair. Campaign group Save Our Common Mountain Environment, who have been fighting the scheme since 2004, recently won the backing of TV botanist David Bellamy. Now locals in Pontlliw have thrown their weight behind the plan to kick out the scheme.

Protesters against plans for 19 wind turbines each more than 400ft high on "West Glamorgan's last wilderness" have joined a new European-wide campaign against wind energy schemes. Opponents of proposals by npower renewables (sponsors of The Ospreys rugby team) for the wind turbines on common land on hills at Mynydd y Gwair north of Swansea say the project will ruin the upland area which has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Save our Common Environment (Socme), which is fighting the plans, has joined the European Platform against Windfarms representing growing disenchantment with the schemes.

Residents in an East Yorkshire village are being urged to join an action group against plans for a wind farm on their doorstep. Fears about homes being devalued has led to opposition to a scheme for a five-turbine wind farm on land at Sancton, near Market Weighton. Sancton Windfarm Action Team (Swat) was set up after a ballot of villagers at a public meeting showed that 85 were against - and just 29 for - the development.

A proposed 120-metre wind turbine would knock 50 per cent off the value of thousands of nearby homes, an action group claims. Save Our Skyline (SOS) was formed in response to a planned turbine taller than Wakefield Cathedral at Coca Cola's warehouse at Wakefield 41 Industrial Park. SOS claims 3,800 homes within a mile radius would see 54 per cent knocked of their value by the turbine. The information comes from a recent study by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

A proposed wind farm at Thorpe Marsh has moved a step closer after Doncaster Council gave the go-ahead for tests to be carried out. Members of the borough's planning committee unanimously backed the request for permission to set up equipment to measure the wind strength at the site in fields at Arksey Common Lane. But Coun Mick Jameson asked council officers to ensure developer Simon Kerrison fully restored the site to its original state when the tests were completed.

An application to build two wind turbines in Almondsbury has been re-submitted. In August Almondsbury Sports and Social Club made an application to South Gloucestershire Council to build two 15-metre high wind turbines. ...last month the application was withdrawn because of concerns raised by local Highways officials. The application has now been re-submitted after alterations were made as to where the two turbines would be located on the club's site.

Energy firms are undermining the planning process by offering sweeteners worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to communities living in the shadow of new wind farms, critics claim today. The Campaign to Protect Rural England says growing numbers of 'goodwill payments', which include sports pitches, play areas or pensioners' lunch clubs, bring the planning system into disrepute. Such gestures could 'be seen as akin to buying planning permission' and should be banned, it said.

The inquiry will look into the appeal by Pennant Walters Hirwaun Ltd against the failure of Rhondda Cynon Taf Council to determine within the statutory eight-week period an application for planning permission for 12 wind turbines and ancillary infrastructure on the mountainside south of the A465. In April councillors rejected the wind farm plan following a recommendation from planning officers that it be refused.

A public inquiry into whether a wind farm can be built in the Vale of Belvoir was teetering on the brink of collapse today after queries were raised over the accuracy of environmental assessments. Representing BLOT - Belvoir Locals Opposing Turbines - Tina Douglass questioned whether several of the assessments were based on plans for ten or seven turbines at the site at Thackson's Well, near Normanton and Long Bennington. At one stage, it looked as though the inquiry could be called off ...

Developers are "bribing" communities to back wind farms by offering to pay for lunch clubs for pensioners and children's play parks, according to campaigners. The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) say at least 35 communities have been offered so called "goodwill" payments - one for every English region - by developers interested on building wind farms in the area. ...However, developers say the payments are a transparent and routine part of "corporate social responsibility" which offers money to the community where large scale developments are planned.

Rumours that giant wind turbines at Camber are sinking into the marsh have been scotched. Neale East, of the Wind Farm Liaison Group, said: "No they are not sinking. There is no truth in this whatsoever. "All 26 turbines are now up and the next construction work to take place will be putting up three metereological masts.

A newly constructed wind turbine farm is being blamed for the loss of television reception in a rural area. Locals in the Ballycummane and Tournafulla areas of west Limerick claim the wind farm has been placed directly in line with the Maghera transmitter in Clare from where they receive their television reception. Following an initial investigation, RTE said developers behind wind farms must be held accountable for any loss of television or radio signal.

The new 18-turbine windfarm at Tournafulla is interfering with television reception in the Ballycommane area, according to RTE Transmission Network Ltd (RTENL) bosses. And RTE says that responsibility for the problem rests 100 per cent with the commercial developer. ...Mick Kehoe, executive director with RTENL, has written to Deputy Jimmy Deenihan explaining that viewers in the Ballycummane / Tournafulla area receive their television signals from the transmitter in Maghera in Clare, and that the windfarm is directly in line with the transmitter.

Following on from last weeks landslide which is thought to have been caused as a result of work that is being carried out on a wind farm site, Shannon Regional Fisheries Board's Matt Nolan has reported that to date 2,000 small fish have been removed from the Owengar River. ...Having visited the site, Dromahair based Green Party member, Johnny Gogan believes that "it appears that the bogslide resulted from a heavy build up of excavated material on Corrie mountain related to the construction of an access road to the intended wind-farm. Such a liability should have been detected by an effective Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Shocking footage of a malfunction that destroyed a Danish wind turbine has been passed to the News Telegraph - by a district councillor concerned over the future of Ashbourne's first wind farm. District and county councillor Andrew Lewer says he sees the decision to allow an appeal and grant permission for four turbines near to Carsington Water as a "nail in the coffin for local democracy".

The battle lines have been drawn up over plans to build a wind farm on a tract of farmland in Bower. Unanimous opposition was tabled to the proposed 13-turbine venture at Durran Mains by 60 or so residents who attended a meeting on Friday evening organised by a local protest group. The forum was arranged in the wake of the lodging of a planning application for the 19.5 megawatt development.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been leaving about 10,000 computers switched on overnight. ...This means the overnight powering of FCO computers in a year has been roughly equivalent to the average annual output of a 1.7Mw wind turbine, or the electricity usage of several hundred homes. ..."It has been our assessment that the risk of lost productivity and the risk to national security that this policy avoids outweighed its cost," said Munn in the answer given on 15 September.

The Crown Estate, which owns almost all of the UK's sea bed for 12 nautical miles, is in the process of leasing out large tracts of it to developers. The largest of the planned wind farms, the London Array east of the Thames estuary ...A recent report by a committee of MPs showed that in most of the remote locations where wind farms are being built, there is no access to the national grid. In some places, developers are facing 12-year delays before they can be connected.