Elizabeth Grey, 49, parked her red Peugeot over the site on the verge at the bottom of Cauldwell Avenue in South Shields, saying that residents had been let down by South Tyneside Council and telecommunications giant 3 in allowing construction of the “astronomical” mast to go ahead. Since the planning application was put in on March 24 of this year, there were more than 160 objections and a petition delivered to the council.

Coun Andrew Guy, Green Party councillor for West Park Road, said that residents had been “ignored by design” in the consultation process and that it was a struggle to find a single person in the area who supported the planning application. Despite Elizabeth’s Peugeot protest, the works have not been abandoned - just delayed.

Author Elizabeth, who lives with her husband and three children, saw her car fenced off by contractors, before 3 confirmed that it had temporarily paused the mast’s construction on November 3. The company cited the disruption along with extreme weather conditions brought by Storm Ciarán.

Elizabeth told ChronicleLive: “I would park my car there again, but it’s a funny one. Obviously if they want to do the work again, they’re not stupid, they’re going to think, well she’s going to park her car there again or someone else is and it’s going to cost us thousands of pounds.”

Elizabeth and her neighbours are continuing to check for the issue of any new Temporary Traffic Regulation Orders (TTRO), as they are expecting contractors to return in the near future and be forced to close the road while the works are ongoing. At the time of writing, no TTRO has been issued. 

Elizabeth said: “I don’t know what they’re going to plan to do, we’ve exploited a loophole with parking the car there and because the police can’t move us on or anything like that, it worked. But we’re not entirely sure what they’re going to do at this point.

“We think they might try and get yellow lines put in there, but obviously that would have to go through the council and the planning committee and it would take absolutely ages. Hopefully the councillors would try and block that, so at the minute it’s just a waiting game to see if they’re going to attempt it again.”