A large piece of a school wind turbine which smashed into a Seascale home could have killed someone, residents say.

High winds caused the plastic casing, measuring 3ft by 4ft, from a turbine at Seascale School, to hit Terry Cullum's house at The Dunes, a new housing estate.

Five years ago a blade from the SAME turbine flew around 200m into a field.

At the time the school described the incident as “exceptional circumstances”, adding it didn’t “envisage it happening again”.

Seascale councillor David Moore said villagers had raised “major concerns” about the turbine and the matter was to be discussed at a meeting of Seascale Parish Council last night (Wednesday).

However, school headteacher Avril Spencer said the issue was “unrelated” to the one in 2013 and the turbine had been switched off until stronger metal fixings could be installed.

The incident happened on Thursday night during severe weather.

Mr Cullum said: “If it had gone three feet one way it could have gone through a bedroom window, and if it had gone three feet the other way it would have hit my neighbour’s car.

“It looks like the strapping broke off. I’ve been told when the blade came off they said it would never happen again.

“If it hit someone it would have killed them – that’s not an exaggeration.”

Mr Cullum, who moved to Seascale from Essex with his partner in December, said he was going to bed when he heard “an enormous bang”.

“We assumed someone’s bin had fallen over,” he said. “When I took the dog for a walk at around 4.30am I found a big piece of curved plastic.”

Staff from Citadel Estates, who are building The Dunes estate, told him where the object had came from and he took it back to the school.

“I took it round and they apologised and said they would get someone to look at it,” he said.

“I’m for renewable energy. All I want is when it is put back together for it to be made safe – if it happens again it could be far worse.”

Coun Moore, who is part of Copeland Council’s executive committee, said there was no damage to the property but concerns had been raised by residents.

“They are asking whether it can be repaired safely,” he said. “This is the second incident in ten years. It has been repaired since [the first incident], we were told it was safe and couldn’t happen again.

“Last time it landed in a field which has now been built on – all the houses haven’t been sold yet.

“Both incidents were caused by high winds. The question locally is ‘is it safe to operate there?’”

But Mrs Spencer said this incident was due to cold weather, not high winds.

“We have a service engineer coming to assess the condition of the turbine, which is currently turned off,” she said.

“We believe the exceptionally cold weather has caused the fixings of the cowlings to shear.

“We’ve been made aware that this has happened to very similar turbines over the cold period.

“If this is the case, the engineer will replace these with stronger metal fixings to negate the risk.

“It is completely unrelated [to the 2013 incident]. That was very high winds that affected the blade, this was caused by extreme cold weather.”