MP Ian Liddell-Grainger says the approval of plans for a huge mobile phone transmitter on Exmoor represents a big step towards delivering 21st century communications to the national park.
Work will now start to erect the 30-metre mast on Haddon Hill, overlooking Wimbleball reservoir, after plans were approved by Exmoor National Park authority.
It will be shared by four mobile phone operators and provide coverage over a huge swathe of Exmoor which is currently a mobile phone blackspot.
The mast is part of the Government’s Mobile Infrastructure Project to improve communications in remote areas, particularly for emergency services.
And Mr Liddell-Grainger, Conservative member for Bridgwater and West Somerset, said it should signal the start of a programme to roll out vastly better mobile communications to the whole of the moor.
He was critical, however, of those who had spoken up against the plans, including a representative of the Exmoor Society and two government appointees on the authority.
“Like a lot of locals I am now getting heartily fed up with people from outside the park trying to influence how Exmoor is run,” he said.
“A large proportion of Exmoor Society members don’t live on the moor and thus have not the faintest idea what difficulties are presented by sub-standard mobile communications and fifth-rate broadband coverage, particularly when the rest of the country enjoys 21st century standards for both,” he said.
“It is arrogance in the extreme. Those who live on Exmoor are doing their damnedest to maintain the national park as a thriving, dynamic community despite all the challenges – including standards of communication which would be deemed unacceptable in most of the rest of the country.
“Yet there are still those, apparently, who want to see it kept as some kind of 19th century theme park.
“The only outcomes of forcing progress to halt at the national park boundary will be Exmoor businesses – including farms – losing competitiveness, the disappearance of jobs and the increasing drift of local families away from the park and into towns and cities where there are jobs and where property prices haven’t been inflated to unattainable levels by demand from second-home owners.
“Because of the very challenging topography we have to get a lot more hardware in place before we can cover all of Exmoor for mobile phone services and high-speed broadband but personally I shall cheer each time a new element is installed.
“And I have no doubt that in a few years’ time people really will wonder what all the fuss was about.”