Mobile Phone Masts campaign

At the end of August the City Council refused the application from T Mobile to erect a 10-metre-high mobile phone mast and box on the Green at the junction of Courtland Road and Rose Hill.

This is a victory for the campaign against it. The fear remains that T Mobile will appeal, the City Council will not contest the appeal, or the Government will use its powers to overrule local objections. The campaign may still have some way to go.

The news was accompanied by the discovery of another planning application, this time from Vodafone, to erect a similar mast and box on the grass verge opposite 72 Rose Hill, no more than 100 yards away.

It is difficult to see how the City Council, having rejected the T Mobile application, can avoid refusing Vodafone on similar grounds.

A meeting of local residents on 12 September discussed the possibility of Rose Hill being just a trial run for plans to construct masts in residential areas and on roadsides throughout the city. Contacts will be made with other campaigns, particularly CAMEO (Campaign Against Masts in East Oxford).

It was agreed to ask for as many individual letters of objection as possible to be sent to the City Council before the deadline of 30 September.

Some objections you might consider referring to are as follows:

Application no: 05/01787/T56 – Proposed Vodafone mast and box outside 72 Rose Hill

1. The proposed site is too close to houses. The location is primarily residential.

2. There is already a concentration of signs and hardware around this site.

3. The characteristic grass verges of the neighbourhood, one of its real assets, would be despoiled.

4. More ‘street furniture’ close to the road would increase the traffic hazard already represented by the brow of Rose Hill, the junction with Westbury Crescent and lorries unloading cars for Humphris garage. There is a bus stop almost immediately opposite, and two bus stops nearby on the same side of the road.

5. The mast and box would be an unwelcome and alienating feature in a neighbourhood where sympathetic regeneration is in great demand.

Letters do not have to be long or complicated, so long as they carry the name, address and signature of a local resident and are sent, to arrive before 30 September, to:

Mr Michael Crofton Briggs,

Planning Services,

Oxford City Council,

Ramsay House,

10 St Ebbe’s Street,

Oxford OX1 1PT.

The King of Prussia

Local residents, particularly those with gardens backing onto the site, are anxious to ensure that its large and beautiful trees are preserved. Letters asking for preservation orders to be placed on the trees have been sent to Kevin Caldicott, Tree Officer at Oxford City Council.

In response, Mr Caldicott says he is ‘investigating ownership of site and arranging to make a detailed inspection of the trees before deciding whether or not it is expedient in the interests of public amenity to make a Tree Preservation Order’.

The more letters that are sent to him - also at Ramsay House (address above), reference KC/taa/The King of Prussia - the better. The fate of the trees is likely to have a big influence on the future of the site and the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, anxiety increases about the degeneration of the garden where the trees stand. Cars have been abandoned there, and the fencing has been broken in several places. This has left the garden open to the dumping of car wheels and tyres as well as household rubbish, representing a health hazard and a growing blight.