Officials at Perth and Kinross Council have calculated they have spent almost a million pounds dealing with appeals from green energy companies that have had planning permission refused.

In all but a handful of cases, the original decision to block the application was upheld on appeal but the local authority’s legal and consultancy fees are borne by the public purse despite budgets being squeezed by spending cuts.

Fees paid by the developers are capped at £15,950, meaning the taxpayer funds any administrative costs above that amount. The public purse is also being forced to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal costs if developers win their appeal.

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The figures are the first indication of the scale of the financial burden on Scottish councils of dealing with a torrent of wind farm applications, many of which are speculative, and the subsequent appeals.

Perth and Kinross Council's problems are being replicated at rural local authorities across the country, some of whom have unsuccessfully pleaded with SNP ministers to announce a moratorium on new developments.

Alex Salmond's targets for Scotland to generate the equivalent all its electricity from green sources by the end of the decade requires a rapid expansion in the number of onshore wind farms, with 1,800 applications last year alone.

The country's most senior planning officials warned MSPs Scotland risks being turned into a "wind farm landscape" as applications are received for ever more sensitive sites.

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