WORRIED parents and other residents are fighting to stop a 50ft mobile phone mast being built near a children's play area because they are worried about the health risks.

Mobile phone company Hutchison 3G wants to build a mast opposite Ripon Road, beside the old Ronkswood Infirmary.

But youngsters often use a green next to the quiet single lane road to play and families fear they could be affected by radiation.

They have launched a petition, found at shops in nearby Lichfield Avenue, against the move.

"I'm going to write a letter to them saying we don't want it. We don't know what the output is," said Brian Baker, whose home faces the patch Hutchison wants to use.

"We get all the kids playing out here, my grandkids come up here and we don't know what it's going to give them."

"It means we'll have two in the space of a couple of hundred yards - it's crackers, I think," said Jon Baddeley.

"More research needs to be done."

City councillor Mike Layland, whose Nunnery ward includes Ripon Road, said he opposed the mast plan because of its appearance and wanted it built on the hospital site.

"The brownfield site is the place for them," he said.

"It's the unsightliness of it - who wants to sit in their lounge and look at that?"

Peter Yates, planning manager at the city council, said he had recommended the proposal was accepted when considered by councillors later this month.

"I will be telling councillors that if you refuse it on safety grounds, Hutchison 3G will be entitled to appeal and on past cases will be successful," explained Mr Yates, who said the masts emitted "tiny amounts" of radiation.

"In my own view we have to put up with these things as increasingly they are a feature of the city."

He added that, ideally, the mast would be moved into the former hospital site when it was redeveloped but that it could stay for a number of years.

Hutchison was unavailable for comment.