THERE is growing opposition to Network Rail's plan to install 100-ft radio masts beside the main London to Bristol railway line in Kennet, despite assurances that they are purely to increase rail safety.

The parish councils in which the masts are to be installed have objected strongly to such intrusive landmarks being placed in areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Concern has also been expressed that the lattice-style masts may be used by mobile phone companies in a bid to spread the cost of installation.

Network Rail, which took over as the organisation responsible for the track, signalling system and other infrastructure when Railtrack was wound up, says it does not need planning permission to put up the masts, as they are for the safer running of the system.

But it informed Kennet District Council, the local planning authority, of what it intended to do and gave the council until the end of April to respond. Following correspondence, Network Rail has agreed to give Kennet another month to consult with parish councils and the local residents most closely affected.

The masts are due to be put up at Great Bedwyn Station, Burbage Wharf, Milkhouse Water near Pewsey, at Wickham Green Farm and close to the railway yard at Woodborough.

Great Bedwyn was the first parish council to raise objections to the situation after its attention was drawn to it by the Gazette and Herald.

Last week, the council forwarded a petition to Network Rail signed by 477 people opposing the mast at the station, and objecting to the lack of local consultation.

Residents at Milkhouse Water, near Pewsey, are now starting up their own campaign, attempting to recruit their most famous neighbour, Devizes MP and shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram.

Local landowner Derek Baxter, who will be able to see the new mast from his front window, wrote to Mr Ancram: "Although one understands the requirements for signals for safety reasons I am very suspicious that a mast 100 ft high will be sub-let to the mobile phone operators, thus enabling these operators to have the use of masts without planning permission."

But a spokesman for Network Rail said the masts were purely to improve communications between signalmen and drivers.

He said: "There are no plans to share use of the masts with anyone else.

"For safety reasons we have to insist on having exclusive use of them 24 hours a day.

"No mobile phone company would be prepared to agree to that."

The new masts are being installed as one of the recommendations of the Cullen Report into rail safety in the wake of the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster in October 1999, when a Thames Train driver mistook a signal and drove into the path of an InterCity Express with the loss of 31 lives.

Although parish councillors accept the need for rail safety, they are yet to be convinced that the proposed masts need to be so high or so intrusive.

Belinda Gentle, the chairman of Milton Lilbourne Parish Council, said: "They are unacceptably high, especially in an area of outstanding natural beauty. There has been no communication with us at all.

"I know they don't have to apply for planning permission because it is for rail safety, but they haven't had the courtesy to speak to us."

The council is to write to Kennet District Council, expressing its objections by the end of the week.

A Network Rail spokesman said: "If they were any lower there would have to be more of them.

"They will look nothing like mobile phone masts and their emissions will be focused towards the track rather than in all directions like other masts."

lcowen@newswilts.co.uk