One of Mum’s many ‘hats’ is being chair of the governing body of the primary school near where they live, Arnett Hills incidentally the same school that myself and my brother attended many years ago.

One of the issues that has been occupying the governors recently has nothing at all to do with education, but is instead down to T-Mobile, who have been making repeated applications to site a phone mast almost directly across the road from the school. Whilst there are guidelines one positioning masts away from schools, sorting out the lack of reception for T-Mobile customers of course takes priority. Quite why they can’t just share one of the existing masts for one of the other networks – all of whom have coverage in the area I don’t know.

Up to now, they’ve tried and failed to get the mast approved, going through several appeals processes, however just before Christmas they pulled the classic sneak the appeal through over the holidays trick, and also managed to get an inspector who approved the location. As a result the locals are campaigning through the press, and they also have a petition started on the 10 Downing Street site calling for the guidelines over placing masts away from schools to be made a legal requirement for which they’d like as many people as possible to sign up. Note that the petition is a general campaign against the placement of phone masts close to schools anywhere, not just Arnett Hills.