Residents in South Bristol who suddenly found a 30 metre high phone mast appear at the bottom of their gardens without planning permission are now wondering when it's going to be taken down.
The phone mast was erected at the end of November 2020, with the phone mast company using emergency communications legislation to bypass the need for planning permission. They said the mast, at the back of the South Bristol Retail Park in Ashton Gate, was an emergency installation and would be up for a maximum of 18 months.
That expiry date would take them to earlier this week, at the end of May 2022, but the mast is still there. Now people living in Gerald Road and Smyth Road, whose back gardens the mast towers over, are now demanding the mast goes.
Read more: Fury as huge phone mast is erected without planning permission
They are calling on Bristol City Council to take the enforcement action they found they couldn't take when it was erected 18 months ago. The mast caused something of a stir in the streets around Ashton Gate Stadium when it suddenly appeared with no advanced warning in the last week of November.
Residents asked council planners and local councillors to do something, but the phone mast company Waldon Communications said they were allowed by law, because there was a bit of an emergency. Ashton Gate Stadium had removed the existing phone mast, and they needed to quickly find somewhere to temporarily put up another one.
Under new Government legislation designed to cut red tape for phone mast companies to improve phone signal around the country, Waldon said they didn't even need to tell the council and local residents about the mast in advance, and there was nothing anyone could do. One local resident demanded enforcement action, but it was another 12 months before the council wrote back.
In an email sent by the planning department at City Hall, the resident was told it would be gone by the end of May. "We did receive confirmation towards the end of last year from the telecommunications system code operator (Waldon Telecom Ltd) that installed the mast and associated equipment that they were relying on emergency provisions set out within Part 16 of Schedule 2 of the GPDO (the applicable Central Government planning legislation) which permits installations for up to 18 months without the requirement for any planning approval.
"As such the mast and associated equipment will need to have been removed by May 30, 2022. We have recently contacted Waldon Telecom Ltd and they have confirmed that the equipment will be removed by that date," the council planner wrote in December 2021.
But the end of May has come and gone and the mast is still there. "We've been living under its shadow for 18 months now, waiting for the end of May, but it's still there," said one resident, who declined to be named.
"The generator unit at the bottom is really noisy, and this will be the second summer now when we're out in the garden with that above us."
Bristol Live contacted Bristol City Council and Waldon Communications to ask about the situation and is yet to receive a response.
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