News from Charlotte Atkins
Labour MP for Staffordshire Moorlands

February 2009

The Staffordshire Moorlands District Council (SMDC) planning committee decision to turn down the Vodafone mast, against the officers’ advice, on Queens Drive in the middle of the Haregate estate was a victory for common sense.

The whole process has demonstrated the importance of having active local councillors. As soon as Cllr Margaret Lovatt received Vodafone’s pre application consultation document, she contacted me and the Haregate Residents Association.

We were then able to mount a local campaign alerting residents to the application and its totally inappropriate site on the edge of a children’s playing area and in clear view of elderly persons’ bungalows, flats and houses.

I see my role as your MP to help give such groups a strong voice. So I was happy to help produce the leaflets, support the public meetings and prepare evidence for the planning committee. I also met with Vodafone in Westminster and demanded a response to my letter asking for reasons why other, more appropriate, sites had not been considered or had been rejected.

The real star at the planning committee was 14 year old Luke Smith, a pupil at Leek High. He spoke eloquently on behalf of residents and the Haregate Youth Club pointing out that he did not object to the mast as such but that a more appropriate, less intrusive, site could be found for the 12 metre mast

But this requires the SMDC to sit down with Vodafone and find such a site. Those councils which follow best practice have annual meetings with the telecommunications operators to discuss their rolling plans and to designate industrial or commercial areas which are appropriate as mast sites. They also encourage mast sharing. But the SMDC does not even have an up to date list of where masts are presently sited.

The mast application on the Haregate will be the first among many all over Leek. If there is no properly thought out council plan, we will have a forest of masts all over the town.

Vodafone could appeal the decision of the planning committee so the council needs to be ready to deal with this and future applications. The planning officers’ advice to accept Vodafone’s totally inappropriate location does not give me confidence that the council is putting the interests of Leek’s residents first.