Plans to build the world’s biggest windfarm in the Thames Estuary have been jeopardised by shoddy Chinese workmanship. The 140 giant turbine towers targeted for the Greater Gabbard sandbank have been found to have serious welding faults according to The Sun newspaper.

Now the turbines are being checked over in a Dutch port while Chinese workers have been flown to Holland to sort out the problem.

Sources told The Sun it was ‘a national disgrace’ that the turbines were not made in Britain – there were angry protests in July over the shutdown of Britain’s only wind turbine factory, Vestas, on the Isle of Wight.

There is anger, too, over the carbon footprint of shipping 180,000 tonnes of steel from China.