High Court win on phone mast
12 July 2007
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| Neighbours Anna Spink and Edward Chance after the High Court decision on the phone mast |
JUBILANT residents were this week claiming a High Court victory as a judge ruled that a decision to allow a phone mast must be quashed.
It follows a two-year battle by T-Mobile which wanted to install a10-metre mast in Beechwood Avenue, St Albans.
Edward Chance and neighbour Anna Spinks, who took the matter to the High Court, stood to lose £40,000 if the ruling had gone against them.
As it was the court battle cost them around £7,000 but the Government agreed to pay the lion's share of the costs.
Mr Chance, of Central Avenue, who lives across the road from the proposed site, spearheaded a residents' campaign to prevent the plan.
He said: "Apart from health-and-safety issues, we also felt that it would affect property values. We collected hundreds of signatures for a petition against this mast."
The mast, together with an earlier proposal for a 12-metre one at the junction of Farm Road and Beechwood Avenue, had been rejected by St Albans District Council partly because it was felt the location was not a good one. But the council was overruled by a planning inspector when the phone company went to appeal over their refusal.
Now the inspector's decision has been overruled by the High Court on the grounds that it failed to give adequate reasoning for the decision.
Mr Chance, who took the legal action on behalf of the other residents, said: "It seems odd that T-Mobile, who are spending advertising revenue on promoting a friendly company image, should have chosen to so spectacularly ignore the wishes of so many local residents."
The residents had recruited Paul Stookes, a partner of environmental law specialists Richard Buxton and senior lecturer at the University of Herts School of Law in St Albans, to help them with their case.
Mr Stookes said after the ruling: "It is not right that the Government and phone operators feel that they can ignore the wishes of local residents when seeking to erect mobile phone masts. The Government and T-Mobile should now accept that the site is wholly inappropriate for a mast. It should not seek to impose an unwanted development on people's doorsteps."
The High Court sent the decision back to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Ruth Kelly, for it to be redetermined.
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