Mobile Phone Mast Appeal Decision Some of the members here may remember my previous thread about the proposal for a 42Ft high mobile phone mast across the road from my house. Our Council rejected the proposal in June 2006 after the residents here complained. Then the mobile phone company appealed to the Planning Inspectorate in September 2006. Again, the residents sent in complaints. Today I received a letter informing me of their decision. The mast has been APPROVED. I was initially so angry at the contents of the letter, particularly with reference to the health implications and anxiety of the residents (which they dismissed) that I bashed my fists at an inanimate object and now have sore hands. Preferably I should have vented my anger via the decision-maker's throat. I don't want to live here anymore. We will now have 3 masts within a few hundred yards. I'm not going to be part of the 'research' that the decision-maker acknowledged was necessary, in general terms. I am already suffering ill health with one thing and another. This is going to make me more ill, whether directly or indirectly. Sorry if I offend all the mobile phone users out there, but why should I or any of the other residents here have to live next to yet another 3G mast simply because society demands 'better this, better that' in mobile phones? Why should my health suffer and my enjoyment of living here be marred by a mast that enables yet more coverage in an area that's already saturated with masts? I feel physically sick with anger. I know of at least one village in England that had a cluster of people (all ages) who developed cancer after a mast was erected. The residents eventually manually pulled it down. Another town about 4 or 5 miles from me successfully won a second appeal to stop a mast being erected on their street. Anyway, sorry to vent. Just wanted to update you with their decision.
Sorry to hear it, Hugz. You are well within your rights to be angry, I mean, who really wants to live next to a cell phone tower? What kind of effect does that have on property values, taxes, etc.? So sorry to hear of their decision. :(
Well, even if we could get someone to want to buy our house now it will have 3 masts in relatively close proximity, so our house value will need to drop by about 20 to 50k pounds to even attract a buyer. It's easy for the Decision-maker/Inspector to say that this mast is of 'no detriment' to the residents nearby - he doesn't live here, he probably lives in a nice country home with no masts around. The problem is, the decision was based on the fact that the mobile phone company needs to cover this area as part of its license agreement, whatever that contains. The way I see it is that these phone companies push their products and services onto consumers even before they have the coverage in place, so it puts pressure on the Appeal court to approve the masts. They have eradicated the issue of the masts being an eyesore in the street scene as they disguise them to look like street lights, so that is no longer a valid reason for not wanting it. They dismiss the health implications by saying that it is 'unlikely' that residents will have health issues from the mast, although they admit that 'more research is needed' - guess what? whoopeee, I now get to be part of that research by living next to it for xx number of years. Should I feel privileged? Sorry, having trouble containing my sarcasm. We all feel backed into a corner, violated and we feel that it will certainly affect our quality of life. The view from my office window and living room window looks out onto the country park across the road. The mast will be located right in the middle of that view. It doesn't matter that it will look like a street light, albeit with antennae - we all KNOW what it is. Nobody here wants it. And for the record, I don't use mobile phones at all. I suppose I will have to accept that these masts will pop up almost everywhere eventually. They are already located on the rooftops of supermarkets and some schools. They are in church windows too. I suppose that when I go out to town, I will probably have been near to several masts. I guess I should stop worrying - it's out of my control anyway. It's just gonna be hard to forget once it's here.
