Residents of a street blighted with a 30 metre-tall telecoms mast behind their homes for months will have ‘a street party’ if plans to move it are approved.
A temporary emergency services telecoms mast was put up in a shopping estate loading bay directly behind Ivy Crescent in Cippenham in April. Residents campaigned to have it removed – saying they were plagued with noise and fumes from the diesel generator that powered it.
Now campaigner Simon Cooksey said he is ‘jumping up and down with joy’ at news that it could soon be moved.
He told the Observer: “It’s fantastic news – absolutely wonderful. We’ll be having a street party, put it that way.”
Mast owners Airwave Solutions – part of Motorola Solutions – planted the mast in a loading bay at the Westgate Retail Park on Bath Road as a ‘temporary measure in April’.
The tower is a TETRA mast which is used to facilitate emergency service communications. In a statement in September, Motorola Solutions said it needed to put the temporary mast there to support emergency services while it searched for a permanent site.
It came after a previous mast had been removed from the top of the former O2 headquarters on Bath Road.
Yet residents of nearby streets said the mast was put up without warning. One resident of nearby Dunster Gardens told the Observer they’d had to put up with ‘the smell of diesel for hours on end’ and a regular ‘hum you can hear when it’s on’.
Mr Cooksey of Ivy Crescent said he and others had been ‘battering the council for months’ to get it to take action.
Slough Borough Council issued an enforcement notice to the mast’s owners in August in a bid to get it removed, as it had been put up without approval.
But the owners appealed against this to the planning inspectorate. That meant the council couldn’t take action until the inspector had made a decision – a process that can take up to 12 months.
Now Airwave Solutions has submitted new plans for permanent equipment at 234 Bath Road – just metres from where the first mast had been at the 02 headquarters.
A planning statement submitted to the council said this followed an extensive search for a new location in which ‘numerous alternative site options’ and been ‘considered and discounted’.
It said the new location was ‘the most suitable option that balances operational need with local planning policies’.
The plans were submitted to Slough Borough Council on October 2 and are awaiting approval.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here