And they were joined by Daventry MP Chris Heaton-Harris who said he had already written to the new Energy Secretary to highlight the concerns of local people about the proliferation of wind farm schemes in the district.

The protesters met outside E.ON's exhibition in West Haddon Village Hall on Monday afternoon, the first of three events planned by the company this week after it submitted a planning application to Daventry District Council (DDC) for the seven turbine wind farm last week.

Sue Sherman, from Winwick, was one of the protesters.
She said: "Nobody here has protested before and we didn't know about this event by E.ON until Thursday last week. We put all this together and made the placards over the weekend."

Daventry MP Chris Heaton-Harris said: "The problem with wind power is that when the wind stops you still need power, and therefore you need a traditional power station. To increase the output from one of them is terribly inefficient and can undo all the carbon emissions saved by a turbine.

"I've already emailed the new Energy Secretary and I want to organise meeting between him and representatives of those opposing wind farm applications so he can hear their views.

"I've also been thinking of the content for my maiden speech in the house, and I think I'll be mentioning wind farms and development near Daventry."

Chris Millar, leader of DDC and the local ward councillor, was at the protest. He said: "As a council we are not against wind power, but we think that the location for turbines should be the most effective.

Here, the wind speed is low so turbines produce less energy."
However, Daniel Badock, E.ON project developer, said: "At the Winwick site, the wind speed at hub height would be 6.9 metres per second (around 15.5mph] and even areas with low wind speeds in the UK are actually high speed areas compared to the rest of Europe.

"Our calculations show the turbines and wind speeds would produce enough energy for 7,800 homes for 25 years."