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Phone masts
Local Government Chronicle
There are some issues in politics which simply refuse to go away. The public might be told it is being stubborn, stupid, ill-informed, perverse, illogical and obsessive but still it niggles and nags away.
Public disquiet about the siting of mobile phone masts is just such a phenomenon. Two years on the trot Private Members Bills in the House of Commons have sought to extend local authority powers over the siting of masts. Twice the bill has been talked out with barely an airing.
Now it is about to make its third appearance. Its sponsor, gentle reader is your humble correspondent.
I confess that my interest started with laziness. Coming No 14 in the order of private members batting is not high enough to offer a realistic chance of making the statute book but not so far down it to mean the business will never be reached. The solution is to identify an existing project in search of a sponsor. Hence the unlikely association of your columnist, for whose benefit the Almighty most certainly did not reveal the mysteries of electronics, and mobile phone masts.
The bill has certainly hit a nerve. Councils up and down the land have voted to support the measure and the e-mail has burned hot with messages of support from local protesters.
My proposition is very simple: faced with such widespread concern the sensible government should look for pragmatic ways to allay public fears without torpedoing the industry. The mobile phone industry has the same interest.
And the fact is that the planning system for mobile phone masts might be almost expressly designed to provoke suspicion. In essence there are four sorts of installation.
At the top end of the hierarchy masts more than 15 metres high attract the full planning permission works. At the bottom end the boxes (“pico cells”) which are masked by shop signs or are sited perhaps every 50 metres along a busy shopping street slip under the de minimis rules. A bit up from them the small base stations which may sit on the top of buildings and are no higher than 4 metres are classed as “permitted development” and require no planning permission though operators have agreed to consultations depending on the site.
The real battle is over ground based masts of up to 15 metres. Under a voluntary code operators are required to rate the site and the rating determines the consultation required. The local authority has eight weeks to decide whether to object to the mast. If it does object the normal appeal procedure is followed. Health issues are not normally a consideration in assessing a proposal: amenity is a more frequent ground of refusal.
The most insistent public concern is, precisely, the health impact of mobile phone beams sited near schools and health facilities despite official reports which say that no evidence of harm exists (Sir William Stewart’s report of 2001 revisited in 2004).
Scotland, as so often, does things differently. Masts below 15m require full planning permission. The Welsh Assembly is thought likely to go down the Scottish route.
My bill has three elements. The first is to require operators to produce a statement of potential hazard when they submit a project. Councils must apply the precautionary principle in assessing these applications. The second requires operators to set out the area and range of the beam of greatest intensity in relations to health or educational facilities. Finally it gives councils the powers to remove masts on land used to medical or educational purposes.
I do not claim that I have written the Book of Revelation. I claim no technical expertise. The bill is an invitation to the government and the industry to engage in the issue to work out consensually what needs to be done to address a problem which shows no signs of going away and to use my bill as a means of delivery.
The bill is No 2 on March 3. The Government can, of course, arrange for it to be quietly talked out. And next year, no doubt, it will turn up all over again…..
© Local Government Chronicle
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