The Waikato Council has intervened and got Spark to cut the height of its cellsite tower at 9 Wainui Rd, Raglan.
Raglan 23 asked the Council:
- A new mobile phone cellsite has been constructed this week at 9 Wainui Rd, Raglan in the grounds of the Raglan telephone exchange. Did Council issue a building consent for the tower?
- If so who was the consent issued to?
- On Thursday 18th the tower was shortened. Was that a result of an action by Council?
A Council spokesperson replied saying:
Under the District Plan rules aerials are a permitted activity as long as they meet certain requirements. One of the requirements is that the height or support structures cannot exceed the height control plane for the Raglan Navigation Beacon.
This particular aerial exceeded the height restriction and therefore did not comply with the District Plan. Council’s Environmental Monitoring Officer has informed them that the aerial either needed to be altered to comply with the District Plan requirements or removed entirely.
The tower was subsequently shortened to under required height restriction.
There has been much discussion from Raglanders concerned about the ugly tower erected by Spark and possible health issues when a cellsite is close to accommodation. A representative from that company told Raglan 23:
“We apologise for any confusion or problems the installation has caused. That was not our intention. The cell site has been built to provide upgraded coverage and reliability to the community over the holiday break as the number of people visiting Raglan swells.
Last summer Spark dealt with a number of complaints from customers in Raglan who experienced dropped calls and slow mobile broadband as a result of congestion on the network. We undertook to upgrade our sites in the area to provide better services to Raglan.
The site that has been built is a temporary installation that will be in service until approximately February next year. After that we will need to look for a more appropriate permanent solution to service the area.
We received an indication that a 15m cell site would be allowed at the Wainui Road location. After concerns were raised, and our consultants provided further information, it became apparent that the maximum height would be 10.3m. As a result, during the site’s construction, we reduced the size of the site by more than 5m so it would be allowed.
The outcome is that we have built a temporary 9.3m high cell site that will deliver better coverage to Raglan for the next few months. It is important to note that the lower height means the site will not be as effective as it would’ve been, so there still could be some coverage issues.”
So the main reason for the new cellsite is increase capacity over the holiday period. It will also provide better coverage in the area shaded by the Norrie Avenue/ town hill ridge, so the current patchy coverage in Bankart St, Gilmour St, Stewart St and the Bow St hill should go.
The lesson for Spark and other corporates is that Raglan is different. We do care about the town and you need to talk to us first.
We also asked Vodafone what they were doing about congestion on mobile phones during the holiday period. They said, “We have made some upgrades to the Raglan site to help handle the influx of visitors to the area who use their smartphones.”