A MODERN turbine could be blowing in the wind alongside Bursledon's historic windmill if ideas to provide sustainable energy in Eastleigh take off.

Councillors at a full meeting of the authority were told that the windmill was being considered as a site for a turbine, along with the borough's country parks.

Eastleigh's executive councillor for the environment, Louise Bloom, said that the wind turbine could serve an educational purpose, as well as supplying electricity to the grid, adding: "It won't do much on its own, but it would show people what turbines do."

Eastleigh is about to reveal a new initiative, which has been dubbed Beep, standing for the Borough of Eastleigh Energy Project.

Community organisations are to be invited to bid for a sustainable energy supply to be installed in their buildings.

The supply is likely to involve combined heat and power (CHP) technology using a furnace - typically burning wood chips - that supplies hot water as well as electricity.

Cllr Bloom also wants to see the council itself install CHP in one of its own buildings - possibly the Wessex House office block for start-up firms in the town centre.

Hopes of installing a CHP system to homes being built on the former Pirelli factory site in Leigh Road have been abandoned. However, Cllr Bloom said she had not yet given up hope of seeing CHP at Dowds Farm, a major housing development planned for farmland at Hedge End.

Smaller CHP schemes, for individual homes or groups of homes, are now thought more likely to succeed than a neighbourhood burner.