CAMPAIGNERS against the Balksbury Hill mast have discovered there have been two 'mirror-image' cases in other parts of the country recently where a phone company has won permission to construct a telecommunications mast because the application ran over the 56-day rule.

Mrs Jennifer Johnson said that one was in York and the other in Ipswich. "They are like reading our own case," she said. "And these are just the latest ones. They are going on all over the country."

She said that in East Devon councillors established a policy of refusing telephone masts near to residential property until such masts have been proved to be safe.

And she argued that Test Valley Borough Council should do the same, rather than make decisions on merit for each application.

Officers at Test Valley Borough Council were preparing a case to defend the planning committee's decision as a test case at an expected planning inquiry.

But the preparation fell by the wayside once the administrative error was discovered.