Appeal No. APP/P1615/A/01/1065956

1. My name is Mrs Lynne Edmunds of Elyn Cottage, Chapel Hill, Amberley, Gloucestershire. I am joint Co-ordinator for Gloucestershire of Mast Action UK (MAUK). I have been involved in campaigns to preserve and protect local communities who felt under threat both in a London suburb and, over the past 20 years in this area of Gloucestershire.

As a journalist and section editor with Reuters News Agency and the Daily Telegraph, as well as being a founder member of the special reports investigative team of the latter and Editor of a Pan-European Business Magazine I have researched scientific, business and other subjects for over 20 years. I first researched the risks of radiation from powerful masts for the Daily Mail Magazine when the entire spectrum of the community in Pembrokeshire was fighting against the siting of military masts close to schools and St. Davids Cathedral. I also studied Dr. Roger Coghill's first book on the subject.

I returned to the subject when my home village of Amberley, a tiny hilltop village in a unique location in the middle of 2000 acres of unimproved upland limestone grassland under the care of the National Trust, and in an Area of 0utstanding Natural Beauty was threatened with a TETRA installation in its most densely populated centre. Since then I have reviewed most available academic reports on the effects of the TETRA system, as well as others relating to telecommunication systems generally. I have also made representation to politicians and academic bodies of the effects of the TETRA system.

2. There is widespread fear of the effects on the health of local people from phone masts generally, and in particular those using the TETRA system. Whilst this concern may have as its basis newspaper and other media reports, it nevertheless as we set out below is based upon scientific evidence. Particular concern has been raised by experts in their respective fields of the effects on the health of children, especially as the proposed installation will see its beam of maximum intensity falling in a catchment area that has many residents in the most vulnerable age group.
3. The Sunderland study of two schools where the one without a mast is in an ex-coal mining, highly deprived area, and the one with a less powerful mobile mast is in an affluent suburb. Countrywide, observations of parents and teachers have demonstrated that concentration, memory and performance was uniformly better at schools with no masts. The behaviour of a significant percentage of the pupils was more disturbed and disruptive at the suburban school. There was also more depression among the children although their parents were in work (unlike school one) and comparatively aff1uent. All of these can be linked to observed effects of radiation in children. (PLEASE NOTE. this epedemiological study which is being analysed at the University of Bristol was done BEFORE the use of mobile phones was common among children.)
4. The questions about police safety the Po1ice Federation Chairman Mr, Fred Broughton started asking on behalf of his members were sent to the Home Office in January 2000. The first answers over any health risks came in the second week of December 2001 - after the Federation had commissioned a report by independent physicist Barrie Trower (see Appendix 'A' to Statement of Case) examining and commenting on all the national and much of the international scientific evidence, After studying this report, Mr. Broughton and his fellow officers were so concerned by the strong likelihood of health risk for officers using TETRA that the Federation warned the Home Secretary Mr. Blunkett that if satisfactory answers backed up by scientific evidence were not given to the organisation very speedily, members would be instructed to boycott TETRA. At the date of this proof of evidence (January 23^rd 2002) no answers had been given. Or any information released that could be scrutinised by independent scientists, or other organisations with the requisite depth of knowledge of radiation.
5. Ample opportunity exists for the appellant to find a safe site, considerably further away from homes, ensuring the radiation from the main and side beams (the latter falling 25, 40 and 75 metres from the proposed mast) does not fall anywhere near their homes, gardens and schools.

Lynne Edmunds

January 2002