Estate agents throughout the UK are increasingly devaluing properties located close to wind turbines. Local councils are also citing wind farms as a reason to reduce Council Tax, a property value related tax.
Click the icon below to read actual correspondence from estate agents on properties that have been (or could be) affected by wind farms.

Sunday Telegraph, 22 June 2008

Property in stunning location, CHAGFORD, Dartmoor National Park, Devon

"It is top of the list if you want the West Country but don't want to be on the coast," says Charlie Lawson of Jackson-Stops & Staff. Chagford scores because it sits right on the moor, is surrounded by steep valleys and gushing rivers and also has specialist shops, primary schools, pubs and restaurants.

Crucially, too, it is reachable even in a bad winter. "What people desire is a view which is protected, even though they don't own it," says Charlie.
"The national park is rigid in its planning policy and won't allow development or windfarms."

Shilstone Manor, a Dartmoor stone and thatched house with four bedroom suites, attics, two cottages, barns, gardens, equestrian yard, paddocks and 30 acres of woodland, is on the market for £2.1 million through Jackson-Stops & Staff (01392 214222). The views are out of this world and it has its own small henge called Spinster's Rock.

So why did the estate agent feel the need to mention windfarms?

From Hansard, 13 May 2008 : Column 1442W

John Healey: Details of the types of local council tax discount that were being awarded by billing authorities under the Local Government Act 2003 as at 8 October 2007, the latest date for which figures are available, are listed as follows. At this date, 37 authorities reported they were making local council tax discounts to either individuals or a particular class of taxpayer. The discounts shown may have been awarded by one or more authority.

Particular classes of taxpayer or property:

• Pensioners
• Properties affected by flooding
• Various classes of empty properties
• Single occupiers who are called up for 28 days or more as members of the reserve forces
• Those to whom, because they have been affected by the change in regulations since a discount was originally awarded, a discount has been awarded so as to not disadvantage them
• Properties that are no one person's sole or main residence where access is restricted
• Occupied and unoccupied furnished properties that do not have the benefit of mains services including beach chalets
• Difficult to let properties
• Taxpayers who can comply with the council's Mooring Policy
• Other discretionary discounts based on individual cases
• Property affected by the proximity of a electricity generating wind turbine
• Hard to sell property
• Problems with a chalk mine
• Property damaged by fire
• RAF personnel where redundancy was delayed owing to events abroad
• New unfinished property
• Hardship.

Council Tax is a "property value" based tax therefore a reduction means that the council(s) involved have accepted that "the proximity of a electricity generating wind turbine" has reduced the value of a property and therefore reduced the tax accordingly.