Residents article for March/April edition of Organic Living Magazine.
They were innocuous enough at first - pale green planning notices taped several times round a couple of lamp-posts down our road. You had to walk round and round them to read them properly, and at a passing glance they seemed to
refer to some maintenance work on the local church spire. Not so. They were planning notices informing us that the ancient stone louvres were to be removed from the spire of the grade 2 listed church and replaced with plastic.
Why? Because Vodafone are intending to install three antennae in the spire, just a few metres from the surrounding houses. This is an account of our small protest so far, our mistakes and our triumphs, and I hope it goes
some way to inspiring you to voice your opinions if you are experiencing the threat of a similar installation.
Once we realised the full implications of this application, we had to get some form of protest into the
local council as soon as possible. Planning notices are generally posted for 21 days and if no objection is raised, the application is usually processed without a hiccup. Unfortunately for us, by the time one local resident had
orbited the lamp-post and read the notice properly, we had just 4 days left before the deadline for objections. At this point, I was involved purely because I didn’t like the idea of the church being mangled about for the sake
of a mobile phone mast, so I threw together a petition and trawled around the immediate neighbourhood that same night (in the pouring rain, of course) and discovered that people were unaware of the application and, once I told
them about it, were fiercely opposed.
The next day I started to research the subject and learned some very disturbing facts about the potential hazards connected to the electronic radiation emitted from such
installations, and as a mother of four young children, the health risks became my prime concern.
I found it incredible to find that churches are actually being encouraged to sign up with the mobile phone companies, as
they can raise some money for their funds by renting their spires for telecommunication installations, while the companies end up with a cheap alternative to raising a free-standing mast. The danger lies with the fact that
churches by their very nature are deep within the community and surrounded for the most part with homes in which families of all ages spend the majority of their time. The government-commissioned Stewart Report into the safety
of mobile phones, masts and base stations has recommended the banning of masts near school sites due to the unknown effects of the radiation, which, depending on the height of the mast, can fall up to 200 metres from it. Right
into our children’s bedrooms, as it happens. Phone companies have been hit by health scare after health scare, forcing them to admit that under 16s should severely limit use of mobiles, and yet they are merrily popping their
antennae into church spires up and down the country, quietly radiating our pre-school children and retired members of the community, both of whom are proven to be more susceptible to the microwave radiation emitted.
Even
more incredible, I found out that thanks to the Telecommunications Act the phone companies don’t need full planning permission for some installations (depending on the height), but only for any changes that need to be made to
the spires. If the church had not been a grade 2 listed building set within a conservation area, they wouldn’t have needed any permission at all and the installation would have just gone ahead without anybody knowing.
Regulations and recommendations are naturally in force for such installations, and they are clearly adhered to, but I feel they are inadequate and unproven in practice, rendering them insufficient to protect our health. When
you consider that our recommended safe levels of radiation according to the Government’s advisory board, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) is three million times greater than in Australia and over one hundred
times greater than elsewhere in the EU, I think you may share our concerns.
So the health implications were clearly our main consideration, but that’s something that we tripped up on - in our case, permission was only
being sought for the removal of the stone louvres, not for the mast itself, and our only valid objection has to be based on our concerns for the building. Anxiety for the health of residents due to the installation of a phone
mast emitting electronic radiation is not considered to be valid grounds for objection. We’ve wasted some time with our misplaced protest, so be careful if you are in a similar position, and make sure any objections you lodge
are firmly linked to the planning application.
Naturally, I contacted Vodafone directly to see what I could find out, and was assigned a chirpy PR lady who informed me that we had been living with the radiation for years
through television, radio, police, and ambulances and there was nothing to fear. Now I might just be a concerned mother and have no deep scientific background, but it didn’t take me long to discover that the radiation from the
masts is a pulsed signal transmitted on a microwave frequency, which is readily picked up by the brain - far more detrimental than the lower frequency, steady signal of TV and radio transmissions. Radiation on the higher
frequency has been globally attributed to headaches, insomnia and loss of memory, and is considered to be a very real threat to children’s neurological development. To date I have not managed to learn from Vodafone the exact
specification of the antennae they intend to install, although their engineers are currently calculating the estimated levels of radiation we may experience, using a site map. Large pinch of salt, anyone?
The political
parties are clearly split on the issue, even on local government levels. My first instinct, having collected plenty of signatures on my petition, was to send copies of it to all the local councillors as well as the local
council planning department. The responses were very interesting and surprisingly varied for what I consider to be a very emotive issue. The Conservative councillor was mildly interested, but I found it a slog to keep him
enthusiastic. The Labour councillor basically said there was nothing he could do, his ‘hands were tied’. The Liberal Democrat councillor, on the other hand, jumped on the issue immediately and has been, and continues to be, an
endless source of help and information. Find yourself an ally on the local council, and they will fight your corner with great verve.
Approaching the church itself was a bit of a dead-end. In our case, the Church Wardens
seemed to run the show and we were suprised at the level of hostility we encountered from them. It transpired that they were the people who had been working on the application, and were looking forward to the financial benefits
for the church. Although they seemed to have the support of the congregation, we found that many were not fully informed about the potential hazards but having closed ranks, were difficult to persuade otherwise. We wrote to the
Dioscean Office and the Bishop himself, but in return we have been told that the church can simply forge ahead under its Ecclesiastical Rights, which can in some circumstances overrule planning decisions. They are safe in the
knowledge that they are acting within the recommended (inadequate) guidelines, and if the situation blows up in the faces of the phone companies, they can wash their hands of any responsibility.
Meanwhile, we produced an
information leaflet and delivered it to about 150 homes in the area surrounding the church. A newsletter is under construction and will be delivered to the same area, to remind people that we’re still here, still fighting. We
also contacted the local paper very early on and have ensured there is a letter or an article sent in every week, with the latest updates and any progress made. We have had some positive response - people around the town ask me
about the latest news, and the information must keep appearing in order to feed the public awareness. We have managed to get the matter referred to a planning meeting, during which we plan to speak for a few minutes to air our
grievances.
Some more good news we reported a few weeks ago is that in the absence of conclusive evidence that mobile phone networks are safe, our local Council voted overwhelmingly in favour of banning phone masts on its
land, joining a growing number of planning authorities in England and Scotland. A sweet victory, and I believe our constant letters, calls and petitions to the planning department sparked the debate. A fine example of the
‘precautionary principle’, which should, according to the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, be adopted when it comes to such potentially hazardous situations - basically to err on the side of caution and protect the public. Its the
principle which in theory should protect us from another BSE crisis.
The use of mobile phones had become endemic, with more than 1 in 4 using them, and 5 million handsets sold this Christmas alone. The ownership and use
of mobiles is a matter of choice, but we feel that freedom to choose will be taken away from us if the installation goes ahead, as the radiation from masts is emitted constantly. It may not be as powerful as a handset against
your head, but is considered to have cumulative effects, and will eventually build up in the body to a dangerous level.
There is no way that we can halt the relentless march of progress, but there is absolutely no need
to place mobile masts so close to residential areas, which churches invariably are. The only reason to do so is economics - its cheaper for them to use an existing high point than build a new mast, cheaper because there is an
existing electricity supply and cheaper for maintenance. The application is rarely challenged, possibly because the planning notices are somewhat vague, or missed altogether.
Perhaps this article has given you a
kick-start to get involved with, or start, a campaign to ensure that the mobile phone companies are forced to part with some of their considerable fortune and actually bother to raise their masts well away from all our
children. Keep your eyes peeled for the planning notices, and if you hear of a group trying to fight these huge companies for the health of the people - support them.
