I AM pleased to hear that the Deane council is formally objecting to the proposed closure by BT of many public telephone boxes in the area.BT wants to remove four call boxes from the Blackdown ward which I represent, and two more in Ford Street, Wellington, and Sampford Moor, an area in which I am campaigning to become the county councillor next year.
I am pleased the council has taken up my suggestion of using what is known as ‘The Local Veto’ to object to BT’s plans, although I was a little surprised the council did not know about this power until I pointed it out.
All six of the above proposed closures are being formally opposed, and this effectively means BT cannot remove these public call boxes.
There is a protracted appeals process which BT could pursue, but their only argument is that they are losing money on these phone boxes - and that is not actually any grounds for closure.
When the regulating body, Ofcom, last reviewed BT’s ‘universal service obligation’ under which BT has to maintain public call boxes, it decided that the cost of doing so was not overly onerous.
Therefore, for BT to argue it is not making money out of the call boxes on the Blackdown Hills and the rural area around Wellington is simply not a good reason for taking them away.
When I asked BT for the actual financial figures in relation to these particular phone boxes, they refused to provide them.
As many people will discover when they visit the Blackdowns, it is very difficult to obtain a mobile phone signal, and if there was an emergency they would have to rely on finding a call box.
I have also asked the council to go one step further and look at making formal requests for BT to instead begin replacing phone boxes which have previously been removed, or to introduce new ones.
Bishopswood, for instance, does not have a public phone box anywhere in the community nor nearby.
I think that every community should have at least one public call box available for people to use if there was any kind of emergency or breakdown in the residential phone network.
- The photograph shows me at the public phone box in Stapley, which is on BT’s closure list.
