Wimbledon Park Community say “NO” again to new plans for mobile phone mast
 

Community spirit was once again unleashed in Wimbledon Park on Friday 6th October when an unprecedented turnout of 130+ residents joined a ‘standing room only’ meeting with Orange at Christ The King Church hall to discuss another mobile mast proposal for Wimbledon Park. Following an entrée from the Orange representative, a structured Q & A session was held, chaired by Stephen Hammond MP. Though striving for an orderly exchange, latent discontent in the room soon came to the fore as residents’ questions successively built an undeniably strong counter-argument. Residents from a cross-section of the community contested the grounds for any more masts in the area period, especially above a flat over Estella wine bar on Arthur Road. What came back frankly was a string of tenuous justifications on the part of the Orange representative, albeit bravely fronting a Public Meeting. In fact Orange looked poised to cancel after a preliminary gathering with Stephen Hammond and local Councillors at a local resident’s house, for fear of over-heated residents turning it into a free-for-all.

 

It was upheld by residents that the fundamental need for better ‘3G’ coverage in Wimbledon Park rests on a dubious rationale for the mast, as Orange customers with 3G handsets could visibly demonstrate in the meeting (holding up phones with full signal coverage). Secondly the notion of placing a new mast on top of a residential flat above Estella clearly contradicts previous claims by Orange that Beaumont House was the perfect mast location, all other buildings along Arthur Road discounted on the grounds of unsuitable topology and also due to being residential.

 

It is now clear why Orange sought to progress this proposal for 169 Arthur Road via less overt communication, i.e. an innocuous notice on an Arthur Road lamppost in August, two months ago. Fortunately, this was spotted and sparked a chain of communication in the public arena. Such tactics symbolise Orange’s limited comprehension of the term ‘public consultation’ and suitable consultative media. Even the flat owner who lives above Estella received no direct notification from Orange or the Landlord outlining the proposal for two Macrocell masts with antennae and base station. That kind of deliberate omission can’t be ethical and it certainly undermines Orange’s customer friendly corporate image.

 

Further to ongoing talks with Orange, residents face two options now: four street level masts placed as lamp-post type structures in Arthur Road, Home Park Road, Melrose Avenue and Elsenham Street, or the roof-top masts above Estella wine bar. The ideal solution for residents would be for Orange to add to an existing mast in Wimbledon Park discounting the need for a new site (which could in turn be ‘added to’ with additional masts in the future). It seems ludicrous to agree to the proposal per se without any proven technical evidence to support a need for additional mast equipment in the area.

 

Health concerns over mobile phone technology are not new, but are repeatedly denounced by mobile phone providers and official UK bodies alike. Mobile base stations have been linked to cancer clusters, and studies are gathering evidence for incidence of both adult brain cancer and childhood leukaemia. At the other end of the spectrum are cases of ‘electro-sensitivity’ with symptoms such as memory loss, headaches and dizziness recorded around mast sites. But studies showing any causal associations are categorically disregarded, statistics skewed to render findings less serious, or even worse, official studies set up with flawed design parameters guaranteed to skew or bias results in the first place. Because of this disregard for meaningful scientific evidence, residents in public meetings like the one at Christ the King, meet open scepticism. Risk is laughed off with a smirk so that even the more technical amongst us are left feeling naïve and stupid. However the growing literature from academic communities outside this technical cynicism in the UK testifies to a rather worrying spectacle. Mobile phone technology is potentially the ‘new tobacco’, it will just take a decade or two for the evidence to be taken seriously as mounting studies become difficult to denounce by official UK bodies (whose funding makes for interesting reading).

 

If the health considerations are not enough, then the more commercial amongst us will take note of the threat to property values, the aesthetic taint on a community skyline having a tangible depreciative effect on house valuations and shaping negative perceptions on the part of potential home buyers looking to move to Wimbledon Park. (See ‘Worth Making a Protest’, Sunday Times, 12 March 2006.)

 

This is not a minority cause, it has galvanised the community in Wimbledon Park on one level or another. The repeated attempts by Orange to inflict more mobile equipment in our village demonstrate a purely commercial drive and blatant disregard for public sentiment. Let’s stop this proposal in its tracks. If the Council is inadequately armed to halt plans due to Merton’s lax policy (Wandsworth Council’s planning department seems to have more teeth), then it is down to the likes of us.

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