A mobile phone company has halted work on a new transmitter in an Oxfordshire village following a 12-month campaign by a family living next door.

Robert Longstaff and his family, pictured in their back garden, are fighting plans for a mobile phone mast close to their home

Robert Longstaff, of Appleton Road, Longworth, has been fighting since Hutchison 3G got planning permission to put up a 15-metre high mast at the telephone exchange behind his home.

The mast would be only 20 metres from their bedrooms and Mr Longstaff says he, his family and workers at a business he runs would be in danger from radiation emitted from the mast.

Hutchison said it had stopped work as a "goodwill gesture" while it examined other possible sites within a 500-metre radius.

Mr Longstaff lives in a seven bedroom house in one-and-a-half acres with his wife Yvonne and three children Matthew, 19, Andrew, 18 and Richard, 15. Five people make wooden jigsaw puzzles in a workshop near his home.

He said: "There is still much debate about the whole issue of health and safety from radiation.

"In Italy masts have to be a minimum of 600 metres away from habitation and in France and Germany it is 500 metres, but there is no set limit in the UK.

"In Italy the Government has ordered the removal of 2,500 masts sited near residential areas.

"My family does not want to live so close to a mast and the workers in my business say they won't stay if the mast goes up."

Mr Longstaff said he did not oppose mobile phones, but was against siting them too close to residential areas.

Hutchison spokesman Mike Dobson said new masts were an improvement on existing equipment and emitted only 20 watts.

"This latest equipment meets all the internationally required safety standards and even exceeds them, so they are not a health risk," he said.

"Mr Longstaff says there are more suitable alternative sites in the area and while we explore their suitability work on the Longworth mast has been stopped."

A new report from the Government's Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation says there is no evidence of adverse effects from mobile phones or base stations. However the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Res- earch programme has announced funding for two research projects.