MOBILE phone giants are still facing a major battle in their bid to put up telecommunications masts and dishes across the New Forest.

Councillors don't like them and environmentalists don't want the Forest to resemble a porcupine with spines sticking out everywhere.

But New Forest District Council's planning development control committee has been told that it could not refuse the masts on health grounds because of a lack of conclusive evidence - and it has just approved four more.

They are all on private land and the Forestry Commission, which manages the Crown lands of the Forest and the Verderers, who supervise the Forest's grazing rights and have the final say on many issues, are both digging their heels in.

The commission's senior New Forest officer, deputy surveyor Donald Thompson, pointed out: "We have a remit in at least two Acts of Parliament to look after the amenity of the Forest and these things are inconsistent with that amenity. If it's on our land, we just say no."

There are also cases, he said, where masts may not be on Crown land but access for the power cables needs to go across the open Forest or through its woodlands and permission could be refused there.

The Verderers have taken the same firm line with a formal decision that "the Forest should not be decorated with multiple masts serving the various mobile phone companies".

And the multi-million pound industry has a further hurdle to clear in the shape of English Nature, which also has the power to reject proposals.

But after hearing that they could not reject the masts for health reasons, the district development control committee approved masts at Brockenhurst's football ground, South Weirs and the New Park Hotel and off Clay Hill Road at Burley.

Additions to a fifth mast, at Bransgore's Harrow Wood Farm caravan park, were deferred so that council officers can investigate claims that it was erected 55 feet away from where it should have been.

The mast at Burley is in the shape of a dead tree, but although councillors accepted it with n Continued on Page 9

some reservations, Mr Thompson said: "A dead tree with a dish on it doesn't look particularly natural to me."

And the mast on a floodlight pylon at Brockenhurst Football Club came under heavy fire from the village's district councillor Maureen Holding.

Annoyed that the committee was ignoring the views of local people by granting permission, she asked: "Are we trying to make Brockenhurst the mobile phone capital of the New Forest - and what happens if they put them in place and find there's something wrong; are they going to take them down? I don't think so."

But the council's head of development control pointed out that mobile phone providers had a requirement to get as close as possible to 100 per cent cover and commented: "The more people who buy them, the more cover they need."