Cell Phone antennas, Palm Trees are used in SD
NIMBYs and BANANAs spring to life
Feb 22 2001
The Journal
An application for a mobile phone mast in the countryside has been turned down, after councillors said that a mock-tree mast designed to make the structure unobtrusive "had to be seen to be believed".
The application for a 15m high mast with antennae and dishes at Mount Pleasant, near Mickley, in Northumberland, was made by mobile phone company One2One, but was last night turned down by Tynedale Council's planning committee.
The decision was only the second time Tynedale councillors have refused permission for a mast, and came after widespread mockery in the council chamber of One2One's plans to disguise the mast as a Scots Pine. Members of the planning committee visited a similar "Scots Pine" mast at Crawcrook, near Gateshead, and said that the mast looked nothing like a tree. Committee chairman Brian Corbett said: "It wasn't a thing of beauty."
The decision to refuse the mast led former Prudhoe mayor Coun Dave Shaw - a long-time campaigner against mobile phone masts in his home town - to call for a blanket ban on telecommunications masts in the Tynedale district.
He said: "Until the present Government takes some drastic action and starts knocking heads together with the mobile phone companies, we're going to get many more applications, and I think we should have a blanket ban, like other councils have."
But he was told by Tynedale's chief planning officer Helen Winter that every
application for a phone mast had to be taken on its own individual merits, and that the Government had advised against blanket bans.
She added that the potential health risk from masts could not be used as a reason for refusing planning permission, but the visual impact of proposed masts could.
The refusal of the mast at Mount Pleasant was welcomed by ward councillor Anne Dale. Prudhoe Town Council had objected to the mast, along with six local residents in the small hamlet of Mount Pleasant.
One resident had even threatened to take legal action if the mast was given planning permission.
The Tynedale area has been targeted by a number of mobile phone companies wanting to erect masts, and a number of local opposition groups have sprung up.
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