Wind farm may be built off Sussex coast

The Crown Estate, which manages the monarchy's portfolio of property and owns the UK's sea bed, is looking to build wind farms that will help provide the UK with green energy.

The 175-metre tall turbines could appear anywhere from Worthing to Seaford. They would be between five-and-a-half miles and 14 miles off shore.

The Crown Estate has identified 11 offshore zones capable of supporting wind farms with up to 25GW of capacity. It will tender the zones to developers next summer.

It outlined the plans to lease large areas of the sea bed to wind farm developers on June 4.

Seaford Bay environmental campaigner Jim Skinner said he could not see a problem.

He told the Express: 'If they are put five-and-a-half miles out at sea they might as well be 50. There will be a visual impact but we have got to get used to that if we are to take climate change seriously. They are not close enough to inconvenience anyone and noise will not be an issue.'

Mr Skinner, who leads the Friends of Tide Mills, a group which maintains the land between Seaford and Newhaven, said he liked the idea of smaller scale wind power too.

He said: 'Rather than these massive installations, I would ideally like to see them on a smaller scale. I can't see why you could not put one on the Newhaven west (harbour) arm which would probably power Newhaven and Seaford combined and I would find that superb.'

The size and quantity of the turbines would depend on bids submitted. The Crown Estate will start looking at the bids in July.