'It looks like it’s going to take off!' Mum's shock at arriving home to find huge 5G mast at bottom of garden

A mum-of-two has told of her shock after returning from work to find a huge 5G mast towering over her home. Clare Brophy said she ‘nearly had a heart attack’ when she saw the 65ft aerial - which she likens to a ‘rocket’ - looming on the other side of her back garden fence.

The 47-year-old, who runs a cleaning business, had no idea that the pole was due to be installed behind her house, in Melbourne Close, Balderstone. Rochdale council refused planning permission for the installation in March last year on the grounds it would ‘represent an incongruous and dominant feature’ near people’s homes.

But the decision was overturned following an appeal by mobile infrastructure firm Cornerstone. The Planning Inspectorate ruled that the benefits ‘of enhancing local telecommunication coverage would outweigh the moderate harm to the character and appearance of the area’. Cornerstone insists that ‘ screening provided by adjacent trees will minimise views of the [mast] within much of the local area’

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But this was scant consultation to Clare when she came home from work on Wednesday (September 14) to find the equipment installed on Melbourne Road just outside the boundary of her property. “I might as well be in the garden - it’s that close it’s ridiculous,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

“I didn’t know what to think - it’s like a spaceship has appeared in my garden,” she added: “I nearly had a heart attack. I thought ‘what hell is that’ It’s not like a lamppost - it looks like it’s going to take off, it looks like a rocket."

Clare - who lives with children Liberty, 18, and Ruben, 13 - is baffled as to why the pole has been