On Monday night, councillors voted to accept an offer from Hills of Gold Wind Farm Pty Ltd to enter into a Voluntary Planning Agreement which will see a financial contribution from the company to council for community projects in the impacted areas.

The state-significant Hills of Gold Wind Farm proposal would see 70 wind turbines installed five kilometres south of Hanging Rock and eight kilometres southeast of Nundle.

The project extends across Upper Hunter Shire, Tamworth Regional and Liverpool Plains Shire local government areas.

Upper Hunter mayor Maurice Collison said the approval process is out of council's hands, and despite entering the agreement it neither supports nor opposes the project.

"We could just ignore accepting the agreement, but if it's out of our hands and the wind farm goes ahead, of course council misses out on funding that goes back into the affected area," he said.

"It's not a massive amount of money but if we don't apply for it and it goes ahead, did we do the best for the wellbeing of the residents?

"I mean the worst thing.... if it doesn't go ahead, we don't get the money of course."

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The agreement is based on an annual contribution of $3000 per turbine towards a Community Enhancement Fund and a fixed contribution of $5000 per annum to cover administrative costs.

"We sent submissions to the planning department to be discussed, but down the track a councillor may move, and we move against it completely, but that hasn't happened at this stage," Cr Collison added.

Tamworth Regional Council has taken a much stronger stance on the development proposal by ENGIE Australia, outright opposing it.

The project - still progressing through the planning process - would support a generating capacity of up to 420MW.

Once constructed, it would supply up to 1100 gigawatt hours per annum, the equivalent energy to power 185,000 average Australian homes and provide about 215 direct and 430 indirect jobs during the construction phase.

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