Planning

British planning law over mobile phone masts is the most lax in Europe, with nothing to prevent thousands of planned new masts being built in residential areas and on or near schools. In the face of uncertain science about health risks associated with mobile phone masts, PRISM along with other organisations insist that mobile phone masts are placed at a safe distance from the vulnerable, such as children. This precautionary measure has already been adopted in Europe and the US where there are 500 metre exclusion zones around masts. Wealth before Health The current UK Labour Government vehemently refuse to implement a safe distance between phone masts and humans. Hardly surprising, since between them, the mobile phone operators paid the government over £22.5 billion for new 3G licences that use a technology that needs masts to be placed very close to the mobile phone to work correctly. Planning & Changing Technologies To understand planning law related to mobile phone masts, it's important to appreciate the difference between the 2G mobile phone technology you use every day to send & receive voice and text messages, and the latest controversial technology named 3G [short for third generation]. Put simply, a 2G phone mast can send and receive digital signals over 22 miles [35,000 metres]. As such, there needs to be a 2G phone mast approximately every 11 miles to enable the call to be 'handed over' to the next mast [cell]. Due to the coverage of the cell, a 2G mobile phone mast does not need to be located in urban areas where there are lots of people. These 2G masts are usually placed in a field or near a motorway, well away from populated areas. What is a 'safe distance' and why do we need it? Current mobile phones use voice and text technology called second generation (2G). This enables signals to be transmitted/received over large distances due to the