London mansion menaced by mobile masts

A mansion building in Marylebone, London has been peppered with mobile phone masts over the weekend despite the protests of its 700 residents and a lack of planning permission.

Ivor Court in Marylebone woke up to find another seven mobile phone masts installed by 3G network '3', formally known as Hutchison 3G. But Westminster Council claims the masts were put up without planning permission.

A spokeswoman for the council said: "We felt 3 hadn't done all it could to place the masts where they would have least impact on the environment.

"3 then sent us notification of its intentions to erect the seven masts but we had questions and asked them for plans of their notice but they never sent them."

Local councils have a right to refuse planning permission for masts on the grounds of a visual intrusion only, after the government passed legislation to allow mobile network operators to erect masts anywhere.

Westminster's spokeswoman added: "We will be taking enforcement action against 3. In light of the fact that it got planning permission refusal and failed to cooperate by providing us with plans, it puts the company in a rather bad light."

But a spokesman for 3 denied the company had acted improperly. He said after the council refused permission for the original masts the plans were changed to bring them into line with the planning requirements of the licence application. The spokesman said 3 informed the council of the changed plans and interpreted its silence as acceptance. He also made clear that the masts are a shared resource and not just 3's.

One resident at Ivor Court has started taking sleeping pills at night so she can sleep through the strange humming noise which she claims is made by the masts.

One resident of a flat worth £400,000 said his complaints to Westminster Council have fallen on deaf ears and added that concerns about the mast's potential effects on the physical health of tenants has been ignored.