The clarification from the Scottish Government on the guidelines to assess applications has been seized on by campaigners seeking to spike the current run of turbine developments in the Highlands.

Until now, planners have sought to ensure a gap of at least two kilometres from the edge of the nearest city, town or village in evaluating the residential impact on open landscapes.

Stop Highland Windfarms Campaign (SHWC) says it is has now established that a significant long-term detrimental effect on a single house within the zone is enough to stymie the proposal.

The clarification came in a reply to SHWC's letter to enterprise, energy and tourism minister Jim Mather.

The campaign group asked: "What rationale is there for considering it acceptable that a single dwelling less than two kilometres from a wind farm can be subjected to a greater loss of amenity than one two kilometres away at the edge of a village?"

SHWC pressed Mr Mather to make clear that single dwellings are afforded the same protection as those in nearby settlements.

Planning official Alison Hurd, replying on behalf of the minister, said the two kilometre separation zone is designed to help guide developments.

National guidelines make clear that a wind-farm proposal should be blocked if it is deemed it would have a significant long-term impact on the amenity of local people.

Ms Hurd said the effect will clearly vary depending on the scale of the development and the location, and that applications should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

But she made clear that the assessment does include single dwellings within the separation zone.

She states: "The principle applies to houses within and outwith two kilometres of the proposed development and regardless of whether they are single dwellings or part of a settlement."

The clarification has been welcomed by both SHWC and its sister group Caithness Windfarm Information Forum, which had also been pursuing the issue.

They are now calling on the Highland Council to ensure it is taken into account in all future planning reports on wind-farm schemes.

CWIF spokesman Stuart Young said yesterday: "When the Scottish planning guidelines were consulted on in March 2007, there was initially nothing to give the ordinary person living near a proposed wind farm any real protection.

"It was virtually a wind-farm charter and there was no mention of distance from turbines."

Mr Young said that eventually the two kilometre zone was included though he claimed the application of it had sidelined the interests of people living outwith settlements but closer to the turbine site.

Mr Young described the latest clarification as hugely significant.

He said: "We're now asking that council officials and councillors take it on board and make sure that any future consideration of wind farm applications take it fully into account."

Mr Young believed that if the guideline was fairly applied, just one of the large number of wind farms in the Far North currently in the planning process would get the go-ahead.

He said that the letter from Mr Mather's office has been lodged in the local planning inquiry into the 21-turbine wind farm proposed by Baillie Wind Farm Ltd on farmland west of Thurso.

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