Council Cock-Ups See Mobile Masts Go Ahead
It seems that here in Hackney, we are not alone in having an incompetent Council when it comes to mobile phone masts and planning permission. After an effective campaign by local residents, Hackney Council refused permission to O2 to erect a mast on London Fields, just metres away from a primary school, a kids' paddling pool, an estate (Wayman Court) and residential streets. But the Council missed the deadline to notify O2, so it got the permission by default.
According to Mast Sanity, several other Councils have been equally crap, and their misdeeds are listed at the end of this post. Strangely, this hall of shame is not particularly reassuring to Hackney residents - but it does expose just how much local democracy is degraded by Town Hall bureaucrats.
And it makes you think again about Councils paying their Chief Executives £150,000 per year for fear that paying less would cause a 'brain drain'. In 1923, a court ruled that Poplar Borough Council paying its workers £4 per week was illegal, because it was so high as to be considered not 'wages' at all, but 'gratuities disguised as wages'. If that legal ruling still stands, how can they get away with putting a trough full of gold in front of these incompetent snouts?! (Er, that'll be because there's one rule for the rich and one for the rest of us.)
Anyway, here goes ...
- In Tower Hamlets, a refusal notice was sent by second class post the day before the 56-day deadline, and didn't arrive in time. Permission by default.
- Rydedale Council in Yorkshire were similarly a day late in notifying Orange that permission had been refused for a mast near Sheriff Hutton.
- Residents in Williamthorpe Road, Chesterfield were shocked to see construction work begin on a mast they thought had been refused planning permission. Derbyshire District Council had not informed Hutchison 3G of their decision within the 56-day deadline.
- Bournemouth Council sent a letter to Vodafone detailing the objections of the Council's planning committee, but carelessly omitting to mention that they were in fact refusing permission! Vodafone claimed deemed consent for the mast. In direct violation of Council policy, the mast will be placed on land owned by the Council.
- Residents of Wycombe face a battle with O2 after their district council missed the 56-day deadline.
And there is more! The BBC looks at the issue here. Bleating council officials say that the law is wrong, and should not grant permission by default if there is a cock-up. They are probably right, but it's hardly an excuse for not posting a letter in good time, is it?!
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One law for them ...
Now, if a householder applies for planning permission and the Council does not reply within the deadline, do you get your permission by default? Do you hell. You have to wait. Or else you can write to some government department and probably delay the process even more.
There really is one law for the big corporations, and a completely opposite one for ordinary people.
Incompetance or corruption?
It seems a bit suspicious if they all keep making the same 'mistake'.
Cock-up or conspiracy?
I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between cock-up and conspiracy - in the area known as "not giving a toss".
Bad science
There's only one problem with "anti-mast" campaigns, they're based on scientific gibberish. This is from the Guardian's "Bad Science" column:-
"Pay attention. The one thing that people who worry about the health risks of mobile phone masts tend to forget is the inverse square law: the power of the signal falls away extremely rapidly as you move away from the mast, much faster than you’d think, exponentially in fact, because the energy is dissipated and spread out in 3 dimensions like a big, ever-growing sphere. A bit like how the skin of a balloon gets thinner, the more you inflate it.
Meanwhile you’re holding a dirty great big transmitter right up next to your brain in the form of your mobile phone. In fact, because of the inverse square law, the phone gives you a far higher dose of evil rays than the mast. Go on, press it harder, I can’t quite hear you. But mobile phones, very cleverly, preserve their battery life by transmitting a much weaker signal into the air (and therefore also your head) when they detect that a mast is very close by. If you have a phone, it’s in your interest to have it transmit at the lowest power it can manage, which means a strong signal from the mast, which means the mast is on your street. I don’t expect you all to start campaigning at once."
It ain't necessarily so
But there are plenty of other studies that suggest quite different conclusions - and some may be more authoritative than The Guardian.
The main point is though - as confirmed by the government's own Stewart Report - that scientific evidence is inconclusive, and therefore, there should be a precautionary approach, avoiding in particular, high-density residential areas and primary schools.
Meanwhile the number of masts required could be cut to a fraction if the government were to bring the mat network into public ownership and integrate it. One network, not one for each competing company.
And as I understand it, the Inverse Square Law means that radiation decreases at a rate of the distance squared from the source. So if you are twice as far away, the radiation will be one quarter of the intensity. But that does not make masts safe. If they have a lot of radiation, then if you are close by, a lot of radiation will still reach you.
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