MINISTERS have rejected plans to build Europe’s biggest land-based wind farm on fells in the Lake District, setting a precedent that could protect other areas of unspoilt countryside from similar schemes.

The proposal would have meant the construction of 27 turbines, each standing 377ft (115m) — 12ft higher than St Paul’s Cathedral — across a five-mile ridge at Whinash, in Cumbria, between Borrowdale and Bretherdale.

The project, widely seen as a test of the Government’s commitment to renewable energy sources, pitched the Cumbria Tourist Board and the Council for National Parks against environmental groups.

Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, accepted the conclusions of David Rose, the inspector who presided over a six-week public inquiry, that the damage to the area’s natural beauty was too high a price to pay. Many of the 162 wind farms now at the planning or proposal stage are for rural areas in northern England, Wales and Scotland.

Mr Wicks made the announcement, which was greeted with delight by the scheme’s opponents, on the day that the Government formally published the energy review that has put nuclear power back on the agenda.

Environmental groups described the decision to reject Whinash as “another blow to the Government’s green credentials”. Chalmerston Wind Power told the inquiry in Penrith last April that the turbines on the 1,900-acre (770 hectares) site would produce 41 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 47,000 homes for 110,000 people.

The British Wind Association said that the scheme would have met one third of the renewable energy target for Cumbria. At present generating that much power creates up to 180,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Supporters of the No Whinash Wind Farm group claimed that the development would destroy a cherished landscape in the gateway to the Lake District and damage tourism. They also said that the construction process would create pollution.

The inspector sifted through 36,000 items of evidence, read 750 documents and listened to 73 witnesses before concluding that the effects on the landscape and its value for recreation would be so serious that they would outweigh the green benefits.

Mr Wicks announced the decision in a letter to David Maclean, MP for Penrith & The Border. The minister said: “Tackling global warming is critical but we must also nurture the immediate environment and wildlife. This is at the crux of the debate over wind energy.”

Stuart Burgess, chairman of the Countryside Agency, said: “The development would have damaged this wild, remote and highly sensitive landscape. While we are strongly in favour of renewable energy initiatives we have a duty to ensure that these nationally important landscapes are conserved for future generations.”

Andrew Forsyth, executive director of Friends of the Lake District, which campaigned against the proposal, said: “I am delighted that ministers have bowed to the weight of evidence on the visual, cultural and economic harm which a wind farm would have inflicted on this icon of upland beauty and tranquillity.”

Opponents of the wind farm included the mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington and villagers, professionals and farmworkers who live and work around Orton, Cumbria. Sir Chris said that the scheme “beggared belief”.

Kyle Blue, an estate agent from Orton and chairman of the No Whinash Wind Farm group, said: “When someone who has climbed Everest writes to say that you live among some of the loveliest hills in the world you know what you are fighting for is really worthwhile.”

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