RESIDENTS are fighting plans for a mobile phone mast in a Holme Valley village.

Phone company T-Mobile has applied for permission to put an 18-metre mast on St George's Road, Scholes - 250 metres from a junior and infant school.

Villagers are holding a meeting about the mast at 7.30pm tonight in St George's Club.

The mast is to go on the side of a building at Lea Mills, in the middle of a residential area.

Peter Murray, of nearby Whitewells Gardens, said: "This mast would be in a hollow and everyone would look down on it.

"A large majority of residents don't want it here.

"It will not spoil the visual amenities too much, but the big concern is the health risks.

"We have been given the usual reassurances about research showing there are no risks.

"But the research that is quoted on the planning application is from 2000. It is old information."

Mr Murray and other residents have lodged objections against the mast.

There are no set guidelines on how far mobile phone masts should be from schools and houses.

The Stewart Report - set up by the Government in 1999 - did not recommend introducing minimum distances.

Prof William Stewart, who led the inquiry, concluded that the "balance of evidence does not suggest mobile phone technologies put the health of the general population of the UK at risk."

But his report recommended that masts at sensitive sites, such as schools, be given extra consideration.

Objections to the Scholes mast have to be sent to Kirk- lees Council's planning department by April 20.

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