A DEVELOPER has applied for permission to build a £5 million windfarm, despite more than 600 campaigners fighting the development.

A DEVELOPER has applied for permission to build a £5 million windfarm, despite more than 600 campaigners fighting the development.

Mid Suffolk District Council had already given the go-ahead for a 70 metre high wind monitoring mast at Wyverstone, near Stowmarket, for up to a year.

This has now led to an application for two 130 metre high turbines which would electricity to more than 3,600 homes.

Stop Wyverstone Wind farm Action Group (SWWAG) are fighting the proposed development in the Potash Lane area and will now launch a blimp to reveal that the machines will be as high as the London Eye.

Dr Neil Macey, a Stowmarket GP and SWWAG's chairman, said today: “This development will have an immense visual impact on the surrounding landscape, if they are allowed to be built.

“Each turbine will be as tall as the London Eye with blades the size of jumbo jet wings. In an attempt to demonstrate how tall the turbines will be, the group is planning to fly a helium filled blimp close to the site.”

Ashley Turner, a spokesman for Climate Change Capital, a London merchant bank which is backing Mr Hilton financially, said the farm will cost between £4 and £5 million and possible more.

They could be operational as early as 2010 and he said: “They are tall structures, certainly, but there is nothing in the landscape or area that we have chosen that will denigrate it.”

The helium filled balloon, measuring six metres long and 2.5 metres in diameter, will be launched during the weekend of Saturday October 4 and Sunday October 5 between about 10am and 5pm.