A CONTROVERSIAL decision on whether to site one of Exmoor’s tallest structures on an iconic beauty spot will be made at an Exmoor National Park Authority planning meeting on Tuesday (November 3).

The towering 30-metre communications mast, which could dominate picturesque Haddon Hill near Skilgate, would be dwarfed only by the Kennisham Hill mast near Wheddon Cross and objectors claim it could wreck one of Exmoor’s most popular tourist and visitor destinations.

Arquiva Ltd has applied to site the shared communications mast in the Haddon Hill public car park.

A popular visitor destination, Haddon Hill is also a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation. A total of 13 sites were looked at before this one was chosen.

The mast would be operated by at least four major mobile phone networks and would cover an area including Skilgate, Upton, Brompton Regis and north as far as Withiel Florey.

It would be part of the Government’s Mobile Infrastructure Project to provide coverage to remote farms and houses and improve emergency services as well as providing better mobile services for tourists, farmers, tradesmen, doctors, vets and others on the move on the moor.

The application also points out that the mast would provide mobile phone coverage for Wimbleball Lake as well as camp-sites, cafés, riding stables and pubs.

The authority will be told that parish councils in the area support the application. The chairman of Skilgate Parish Council wrote: “We have almost no mobile phone coverage and hope that ENPA will lend its full support to this proposal thereby reducing the relative isolation of our community.”

And Upton Parish Council wrote: “We are a remote community and the ability for more effective communications will be a huge boost to this area, its businesses and may even encourage further investment.”

But in four letters to the authority, objectors claim that the mast will blight the landscape, be visible from Dunkery Beacon and Winsford Hill, may contravene national park protection laws, look horrendous and “cause a blizzard of electromagnetic radiation”.

Further objections come from the Exmoor Society which claims that the mast will be one of the highest in the national park and will have a seriously damaging impact on the landscape and its enjoyment by the public.

The authority has also had objections from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which claims that the proposed mast would contravene the fundamental purposes of the national park to conserve natural beauty and wildlife and urges it be moved to another site.

“If the mast was moved further along the ridge and sited with in the woodland of Britannia Shield, it would be further from the open access land of Haddon Hill and so less visually intrusive.”

In a report to the authority, Sarah Bryan, the park’s head of conservation and access, believes the mast would “form a dominating and intrusive feature in the Haddon Hill car park and would impact on the natural beauty of large areas of moorland” and that the structure and its security fencing would “have a damaging impact on the natural beauty and moorland character of the area”.

On the other hand, she believes that from more distant viewpoints “the mast would not dominate views or have a significant impact on enjoyment of the natural beauty of the landscape”.

The report concludes: “People visit Haddon for its openness, views and sense of wildness. From the car park itself and from large areas of Haddon Hill, the mast would appear a dominant and alien feature which does not conserve or enhance the natural beauty of the national park.”