Speaking at Thursday night's meeting of the Castletown and District Community Council, chairman Douglas Fraser argued that the plan to erect 13 turbines at Durran Mains could affect television pictures in the village.

"We are in a low-lying area and this proposal has the potential to cause problems for us. It could create problems with TV reception," said Mr Fraser, who maintained there are enough wind turbines in the county. "There must be between 60 and 70 already. How many more must we have?"

But Southern and Scottish Energy took issue with his claim. "We are not expecting any large-scale problems. However, if any parties did suffer a deterioration in their reception then we would remedy the problem.

"This might be by improving their receiving aerial or providing the means to receive alternative signals. If the problem was proved to effect a large number of properties, then we would consider installing a small-scale relay transmitter to bypass the wind farm," said a company spokesman.

Southern and Scottish Energy downscaled its plans from the initial 32-turbine layout to address concerns about the impact on birdlife and potential visual and noise nuisance.

Meanwhile, Alan Wilcock asked if any progress has been made in a bid to curtail speeding drivers coming into and leaving the village.

He claimed some motorists are driving at speeds of up to 60 mph and stressed that moves were to be made to try and obtain equipment to register motorists' speed and get an official from the Highland Council's roads department to talk to the community council about what could be done to address the problem.

Caithness ward manager David Sutherland pointed out that there is a limited amount of equipment to measure speed and said that it can take up to a year to analyse the results, but he agreed to contact the Highland Council's Wick-based principal engineer, Iain Moncrieff, to see if anything can be done.

The bridge over the burn near the car park at the Castletown beach – washed away in storms two years ago – has been replaced but two others have not, members of the local community council heard. It was agreed to get in touch with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers to see if any help can be given.

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