Frinton-on-Sea is genteel. It has a long-established tennis club with 16 grass courts; the UK’s oldest summer rep theatre; an annual literary festival, FlitFest; and, on the Frinton Park Estate, a collection of fine Modernist houses. But stand on the sandy beach lined with pastel-hued huts and, within clear view, are line upon line of wind turbines, embedded in the North Sea.
For Clive Brill, artistic director of Frinton Summer Theatre, owner of the town’s Caxton Books and co-chair of FlitFest, the turbines are a “thing of beauty”. From his flat on the top floor of Frinton-on-Sea’s only tower block, he can see around a thousand, all the way to Clacton-on-Sea. “When I cycle along the beach path, I’m travelling in parallel with the turbines — the patterns they make as they turn are amazing. When the sunshine hits the turbines they glow, and at night, the view is spellbinding, with just the red lights on top of each turbine visible, glowing out at sea.”
But James Max, chair of Frinton-on-Sea’s lawn tennis club and FT’s “Rich People’s’ Problems” columnist, sees them differently. “I think they are ghastly,” he says. “They ruin the view, and the view is important . . . I just have to put up with it. I cannot specify where I get my energy from, and I don’t get any financial benefit from the ones that I look out at.”
The sight of turbines is one more of us will have to navigate. Currently, The Renewable Energy Hub estimates that there are more than 11,000 wind turbines in the UK, powering more than 20mn homes. As part of its plans to decarbonise the electricity grid, the government has committed to doubling capacity in onshore wind and quadrupling capacity in offshore wind. Ambitious? Certainly. As part of this transition, many parts of the UK coast could be getting further deliveries of turbines very soon.
But what constitutes a “good view”, and what are people prepared to pay for one when buying a property? Estate agency Knight Frank puts the average premium for a UK waterfront property at 48 per cent compared with similar homes nearby, rising to 66 per cent for homes looking out over the coast (rather than a river or lake). When it comes to waterfront flats, Jackson-Stops reported an average uplift of 10 per cent in 2023, and earlier this year, chair Nick Leeming called beachside homes “the ultimate luxury purchase”.
If that’s true, how have the values of sea view properties in Frinton changed since the first turbine was installed in 2009? Tim Dansie, director of estate agent Jackson-Stops Ipswich, says the majority of buyers he has spoken to haven’t taken issue with wind turbines: “although property prices require case-by-case consideration, I have not needed to devalue a property thus far due to the proximity of a wind farm.”
In 2014, when there were around 4,400 wind turbines in the UK, a report by the London School of Economics cited the average reduction in value for properties within 2km of a wind farm as 5 to 6 per cent; properties between 2km and 4km away, a fall of 2 per cent. But the same year, the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that a wind farm situated within a 5km radius of a property had no negative impact on its price.
In the ensuing years, attempts to consider the question have tended to fall in line with whichever argument is being made: renewable energy companies denying any serious devaluation, concerned local residents fearful of a fall. A 2024 study by scientific journal PNAS on the impact of wind turbines on house prices in the US, for example, showed the effect was much smaller than expected (an impact of 1 per cent for homes with a view of turbines within 8km) and that prices rebounded within 20 years.
A decade on from the LSE study, it would seem that a new generation views wind and solar farms with much less apprehension. “While there will always be a premium for countryside homes with unspoilt views, attitudes are evolving — especially among a new generation of countryside buyers who recognise the importance of renewable energy,” says Jamie Freeman from agency Haringtons.
“This change is likely to continue as the importance of renewable energy becomes ever more apparent,” says Freeman, In spring 2024, the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero recorded that 84 per cent of respondents supported the use of renewable energy — up from 82 per cent in winter 2023 and with overall opposition stable at 2 per cent.
Hollie Byrne, from buying agent Middleton Advisors’ estates and special projects team, says that in her personal and professional experience, it is the uncertainty of how the view will change, rather than the reality of it, that causes most anxiety. “Once they are there, the worries largely go away,” she says. “When I lived in Wiltshire, a local farmer put five turbines on his land with solar panels underneath. I enjoyed seeing them on the landscape, gracefully turning.” Those five turbines form Westmill Wind Farm Co-operative, which claims to have been the first fully community-owned wind farm built in the south of England. More than 2,300 people invested and local school children were invited to submit names for each turbine — Gusty Gizmo and Huff’n’Puff were among the winners.
Could community ownership, where residents directly benefit from energy created by their local turbines, encourage people to see the beauty in their new view? A 2024 report by the non-profit Community Energy England shows the number of UK community energy organisations increased by 18 per cent from 2021 to 2023 to a total of 583.
Meanwhile, some distance north of Frinton, Hornsea 3 is set to be Europe’s largest offshore wind farm, the third of four planned projects off the Yorkshire coast. The work of Danish state-controlled energy group Ørsted, it generates enough green energy to power 1.4mn homes. Hornsea 3, due for completion by the end of 2027, will power a further 3.3mn. And some 32km further north, Dogger Bank wind farm claims it will be even larger when completed, capable of powering up to 6mn homes.
The winds of change keep blowing.
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