RESIDENTS in Cononley are pinning their hopes on Parliament in a bid to ban mobile phone masts from ever being built in the village.

Villagers are celebrating this week after hearing news that a phone mast on land next to Highgate Poultry Farm has been refused by Craven District Council.

Mobile phone operator Vodafone said the 15-metre mast was needed to serve that part of the Aire Valley and rail travellers.

Craven District Council received more than 140 individual letters of objection to the proposal.

South Craven planning officer Richard Preston told the Herald: "We've had a lot of representations.

"We rejected the first site and the applicants suggested another - which we also turned down.

"We really wanted it to have as little impact as possible and in our view it was possible to move it further away from houses."

Susan Middleton, of Aire View, who helped organise the letters of objection to the mast, said she hoped new debates in Parliament would prevent any further applications for mobile phone masts in Cononley.

Conservative MP John Bercow has moved a debate to bring a Bill before the House of Commons to regulate the development on masts.

Earlier this month he told fellow MPs: "The House will recognise that there is widespread concern on both health and environmental grounds about mobile telephones in general and the frenetic proliferation of masts in particular."

He wants experts to be allowed to study the impact on health and MPs to debate information gathered from across the world, as well as change planning law.

"Respect must be shown for the environment, human safety and the tranquillity of communities."

His Bill is set to get its second reading on April 7 and already has the backing of shadow environment secretary Archie Norman.

Mrs Middleton commented: "This Bill appears to have the backing of all political parties and I would like to see Craven District Council refusing to consider any other applications for masts until this matter is decided in Parliament.

"I feel sure that Vodafone will try again."

This is the second mast application for Cononley to be turned down.

Last year the same firm wanted to install one in the industrial estate near to Yorkshire Dales Ice Cream.

Councils can refuse permission on the grounds that the masts are intrusive, but they cannot use health grounds as no clear evidence has been produced that they cause problems.

John Cooper, a National Radiological Protection Board researcher into the effects on people of mobile phone waves, said: "We are becoming more and more confident that people's health is not at risk but you can never use science to prove something is completely safe."

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