News Date: Wednesday 2nd March 2005
Loughton slams Sussex Police Authority and airwave O2 for woeful complacency and incompetence
Yesterday in Parliament, Tim Loughton opened a debate on TETRA masts in West Sussex following months of fruitless talks with Sussex Police and the telecoms company 02 about the need to re-position the masts away from residential areas.
Having received many constituents in his surgeries with health problems such as insomnia and headaches which started simultaneously with the erection of the first TETRA mast in Worthing, Tim Loughton pressed Des Turner, Home Office Minister to do everything he can along with the Government, to encourage the police authorities which commission masts and the companies that install them to take more account of the local sensitivities of local people in the future.
Tim commented:
'I am completely exasperated and feel that in some way I have let my constituents down because those masts still operate as they were intended to operate, in the places they were put, without any changes whatever. Yet again the wishes of local people and local councils are being ignored, bulldozed and treated with contempt by a Department?the Home Office?and by a multinational big business, O2 Airwave, which stands to make millions from the contract, as well as by a police authority that seems to have forgotten that its role is to protect local people and that a good start in that endeavour is usually to listen and respond to those people first.'
ENDS
Note to editors:
1. Out of a sample of 448 people surveyed by residents since a mast was switched on in a residential area, 58.5 per cent. responded that they had recorded symptoms ranging from sleep disorders to headaches and nausea, all of which were contemporaneous with the operation of the mast. Of those people, 40 per cent. identified with having sleep disorders, 38 per cent. with having headaches and 16 per cent. with having rashes or itchy skin.
2. Read the whole speech on Hansard through this link:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050301/halltext/50301h03.htm#50301h03_head0
3. Or visit Tim Loughton MP?s website for details of this and other speeches made recently
