Council tax discounts 'could encourage communities to accept wind farms' - 11/02/2011
Financial incentives could be offered to cheap energy customers living in rural communities where wind farms could be built.
According to the Somerset Standard, discounts on council tax payments could be put forward to encourage people to accept nearby renewable energy production sites.
Energy minister Charles Hendry, speaking in a House of Commons debate, noted that communities should have an "active engagement" in the building of wind farms.
"There has been a democratic deficit in the way this policy has been driven forward in the past," he argued.
"We want to move on from the hectoring approach which was taken by the last administration. Wind farms should be put in the appropriate locations."
However, opponents have hit out at the minister's plans.
A spokesman for the National Association of Wind Farm Action Groups told the newspaper that Mr Hendry is being "naive" to think that financial promises "can buy off the opposition of communities who have shown the strength of their opposition throughout the UK to inappropriately sited wind farms".
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