AS a pensioner, and therefore a complete ignoramus when it comes to the latest developments in electronic communication, I thought, logically, that the best place to site a communications mast would be on the highest point available.

Can someone please, therefore, explain why the controversial mobile phone mast is sited halfway up Down Road, rather than at the top?

David Crofton

Down Park Drive

Tavistock

WHILE not wishing to get involved in the controversy regarding the siting of the mast in Down Road, Tavistock, I may be able to reassure Sue Hammond (letters, January 15) of the health risks involved.

I and many of my colleagues in both BBC and ITV spent every day within touching distance of every sort of transmitter mast. Our riggers spent hours climbing and maintaining the equipment on them.

Many of us are well into our 80s, including our rigger, who walks from Whitchurch to Tavistock every day. I was never aware that anyone in our profession was affected by HF radiation!

Peter Crook

22 Westmoor Park

Tavistock

Unless the system has changed in the last 20 months, the letter from Councillors McInnes and Mrs Garton (Times, January 15) oversimplifies the notification procedure for cellular telephone masts.

Notification does not exempt operators from planning control, but it does shift the onus on to the Local Planning Authority (LPA) to counter-notify the applicant within a fixed, short time of receiving a notification if it requires a full planning application to be made. Consent is deemed if the LPA does not respond to the notification.

This distinction is significant because, if the LPA does require a full application, that application falls to be determined on the same basis as any other.

Because of the tight timescale, decisions to 'call in' a telecom notification for full determination are made by a small panel of councillors, in consultation with the ward's councillor(s).

This sheds a disturbing light on the pronouncements attributed in the previous week's paper (January 8) to certain other councillors. The planning department's failure to notify the public is irrelevant to a proper determination whether to require a full planning application for the contentious Down Road mast.

We elect councillors to make decisions on our behalf: the absence of public objection(s) in no way absolves councillors from their responsibility.

I shall not express a view of the mast itself, because I no longer have ready access to the information needed to take a balanced view of the planning issues. That is our councillors' job and I hope not to see again the undignified spectacle of councillors wriggling across the public prints in an attempt to evade responsibility for their decisions — or the lack of them — by blaming the outcome on administrative staff who are not allowed to defend themselves ad eundem gradum.

Roger W Mathew

Down Road resident and erstwhile planning chairman