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Residents' anger over phone mast plans
9:00am Friday 28th December 2007
Comments (1)ANGRY residents in Coalpit Heath are demanding a phone company withdraws a mast application after it failed to notify households near the planned site.
Vodafone has submitted a planning application for a 12 metre high phone mast at the junction of Badminton Road and Woodside Road.
It follows a pre-planning consultation with 30 nearby households that, the phone company claims, received a low response.
But people living near the proposed site estimate that only half of them received any information on the plan.
They are now calling on the mobile phone company to withdraw its application.
Andy Somerset, of Woodside Road, said: "It feels like they are trying to fly this mast right over our heads.
"I received a letter about the plan but I know a lot of people who didn't and still don't know anything about it.
"I'm having to go round knocking doors explaining what the mobile phone company wants to do. It's not my job to do this really.
"It is a crafty tactic by the company to not notify everyone near the site themselves and then include the number of responses in their formal planning application.
"It's just totally wrong the way to go about it."
Craig Lewis, of Rose Oak Drive, added: "I was among those not to receive the plans or an acknowledgement of the objections.
"I am absolutely livid about the way this consultation has been carried out."
Cllr Claire Young (Westerleigh) has asked Vodafone to resend the letters and extend the deadline for comments for the pre-planning consultation.
"The results of this consultation are distorted and misleading," she said.
"The application was submitted just as people were starting their Christmas holidays and concerned residents won't have long enough to make comments.
"I am now contacting people in the area to make sure they are aware of this."
Vodafone has said that the phone mast is needed to extend the company's 3G network coverage of Frampton Cotterell and Coalpit Heath.
No one from the company was available to comment on the residents' concerns.
The formal planning application has been submitted to South Gloucestershire Council. Comments can be made on the proposals until January 10.
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J Elliott, Downend says...
8:34am Wed 2 Jan 08
No surprise though. Planning chiefs are targeted by the multi billion pound phone operator publicity machine with their handouts, free mobile phones and phone lines, free lunches and corporate hospitality etc. They have a very cosy relationship with the planning officers and consequently mast applications are waved through with out too much bother to the detriment of the people who pay their wages, the council tax payers. Time after time planners fail to notify local residents of phone mast planning applications or mysteriously fail to adhere to the 56 day rule. Council tax payers receive an appalling service from planners throughout the country on this issue, especially as public health is being deliberately compromised.
Over 1000 independent studies, linking phone mast electro magnetic radiation with serious ill health including cancer, confirm that phone masts should not be sited within 350 metres of schools or housing. Numerous studies have proved that melatonin, the cancer fighting hormone, is suppressed by this pulsing radiation. That's why the cancer clusters continue to increase in the vicinity of phone masts. Phone operators dismiss such research, alleging that their own studies suggests no health risk. However recently the national press revealed that T-Mobile covered up the damaging results of their own research. The Ecolog Institute, a research organisation which examines the health effects of mobile phones, was commissioned by T-Mobile to investigate the possible health risks of mobile phone masts. The 2003 Ecolog report confirmed:
Given the results of the present epidemiological studies, it can be concluded that electromagnetic fields with frequencies in the mobile telecommunications range do play a role in the development of cancer. This is particularly notable for tumours of the central nervous system.