THEY thought they had won a famous victory.

But now Southampton residents face a fresh battle over plans to site a mobile phone mast next to a school in the city.

Angry Bitterne residents managed to get plans to build a giant mobile phone mast near Bitterne Infant School thrown-out by city planners at an emergency meeting in February.

Now residents are reeling after discovering that electricity giant Scottish and Southern Energy wants to build another 15-metre mast at the site.

News of the original mast application was first revealed in the Daily Echo in February this year. Power firm Scottish and Southern Energy lodged plans to build a phone mast on behalf of telecommunications giant 02 in an electricity substation in West End Road in Bitterne.

Residents only found out about the proposals when the school wrote a letter to parents giving them just days to object to the scheme.

They organised a 300-signature petition against the project, which they presented to an emergency meeting of city planners in February in a successful last-ditch effort to quash the project.

They claimed that the mast would emit potentially dangerous radio waves which could harm children's health.

Now they face a new battle over the company's plans to build another mast on the same site.

On Saturday campaigners presented a new 300-signature petition to Peartree Councillor Gerry Drake, objecting to the fresh scheme.

He criticised the firm for lodging a fresh planning application while its appeal against the original council rejection of the scheme had not taken place.

He said: "It is a bit silly. They are going for an appeal and then they have applied for a new mast to be put up.

"I am very concerned about where they are putting this mast up."

Clare Perrin, 41, of Dean Road, whose five-year-old daughter Katherine Grove attends the infant school, said: "We were realistic enough to think that the company were going to go to appeal and if they lost, they were going to try again. I did not expect them to re-apply before the appeal had been heard."

Geoff Dunn, 65, of Mersham Gardens added: "Our granddaughter comes quite a lot to stay with us. Our main objection is that the waves from the mast could be dangerous to her. The only difference I can see with the old application and the new one is that the new mast is a more slim line version."

A spokeswoman for Scottish and Southern Energy said the "fresh" application was actually being done as part of the on-going appeal process against the council's original decision.

She said: "We have appealed by the normal planning process to erect a monopole on a brownfield site, which is in the grounds of the substation which already has two transformers on it.

"Our policy guidelines state that we will not erect one of these monopoles within 100 metres of a school. The school is 260 metres away."