PLANS TO replace one of Britain’s oldest wind farms with new turbines almost three times as tall will have a “devastating” effect on the Lake District, campaigners have warned.

Kirkby Moor wind farm, built in 1993, has 12 turbines, each 139ft tall and less than a mile outside the National Park’s southern boundary.

Energy company RWE Innogy is seeking planning permission to replace them with six new turbines, each up to 377ft, which it says could together generate up to five times as much power.

Industry experts forecast such attempts to “repower” wind farms will become more common as old planning consents expire and developers seek to cash in on larger and more profitable machines.

But residents near the Cumbrian site say the “gigantic” new turbines would be visible far further as well as being noisier. They have urged South Lakeland council to reject the plans, leaving RWE to remove the turbines when existing consent expires in 2018.

One couple told the council: “People do not visit the Lakes to see wind turbines. They come to see lakes and mountains unsullied by monstrous modern machinery.”

Kate Ashbrook, general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, said: “We fought the current turbines and we shall fight this application. Because there are already turbines on this moor it is easy to see the effect of replacing them, and it is devastating.”

RWE said it was continuing to consult with the local community on Kirkby Moor and believed the site was “an excellent location on which to continue generating homegrown energy”.

According to industry body Renewable UK, 14 wind farms have so far been repowered, with two more under way.