One industry source said telecoms companies were hoping "to be afford the same rights of access that the energy and water companies have - to make it easier to dig up the roads to lay fibre". Often telecom companies are unable to lay fibre broadband if the landlord of a property is unresponsive.Did you see what they did there?
You see it's not about rights to 'dig up the roads' at all - telecoms companies are already what's termed Statutory Undertakers and have exactly the same powers as energy and water companies. They can already run their cables under or alongside every public road and by-way in the Kingdom.
Some years ago in a remote area of south London my contractor was completing an upscale public realm job, high class stone paving over ruinously expensive Steintec cementitious bases. To site the stainless steel bollards, we diamond drilled 35cm deep - just beyond the depth of the formation, an existing footway, beneath. Mid afternoon BT vehicles started to arrive and by knocking-off time we had an entire fleet of emergency trucks, mobile workshops, satellite transceivers, generator trucks, mobile light towers, a flotilla of personnel carriers and about 100 blokes in BT vests there. My diamond driller had grazed - just grazed, mind you - a fibre optic bundle 450mm closer to the surface than it should ever have been. Their fault, not ours. But the reason for the panic was that we'd taken out the private high-speed feeds for both LHR T5 and Reuters. For which BT charges the big corporates an absolute arm and a leg.
BT is increasingly losing the consumer final connection to many competitors in a very competitive environment, so is relying more on providing private fibre to wealthy commercial bodies. For this, it does not have the legal rights to lay its private cables across your garden, digging a bloody great trench in your lawn to do so. That water and gas companies do have this right is reasonable given that they don't install private end-to-end gas mains for HSBC Towers, or an exclusive end-to-end water supply for the hanging gardens of Bloomberg. BT's plea is a con - they want the right to invade private property to lay wholly commercial, exclusive and private fibre optic feeds.
And the grasping bastards are trying to con us that national high-speed PUBLIC broadband depends on giving them free rein for private brigandage.
7 comments:
Yes, that seems to be a pretty good summary of the position, Raedwald.
Johnson himself could have been better briefed before making his pledge, however.
I question what you say about Statutory Easements for gas and water, however. Certainly, where pre-existing services cross private property, they have a right of entry for replacement and maintenance purposes. Private sewers too were transferred by statute to the water companies a few years ago too. That hardly got a mention in the media, incidentally.
However, it would arguably breach Human Rights law for these gas and water companies to be granted a blanket right to disturb private property for new installations, that of Peaceful Enjoyment Of Possessions
If you have the Act which does that though, then please point us at it..
Complex, and this is not the place for it so please don't... But for a few pointers, elec and gas have powers under the Gas Act 1986 and the Electricity Act 1989 to excercise CPO powers generally using the procedure under the Acquisition of Land Act 1981. But they also have other avenues. Similar rights for water & sewage under varied and more obscure heads. Telecoms have no such powers.
Likewise under the TCPA GPDO 2015 Parts 13 & 15 water, sewage, gas and power undertakers are exempt for most of their activities from the need for planning consent but telecoms are not
Yes, agreed on the complexity point.
But briefly, it seems that the utilities can follow a statutory procedure to get their wayleave over private property from the Secretary Of State, even if they do not have a pre-existing blanket right. The difference in practice might well be academic, however.
That would nominally at least give the would-be burdened owners a chance to object, and the courts the power to assess whether the public interest outweighed the Human Right in a given case.
I'd guess, for the reasons that you give, that there would be far more disturbance to private property from the fibre installers than there is at present from the water and energy suppliers.
The standard of reporting of matters like this is indeed abysmal, and yet they materially affect every property owner.
"My diamond driller had grazed - just grazed, mind you - a fibre optic bundle "
That's patently incorrect.
If you'd just grazed it, some of the insulation might have been compromised, but clearly they'd noticed that data had been interrupted.
So, your drill had penetrated the insulation, the armour shield and compromised one or more of the fibre strands. I don't call that a graze.
This could be a tricky one for the Tories to get through even if they wanted. The sanctity of private property is paramount to many minds on the Right, and they do have their point. I predict donations, therefore.
It was Labour who transferred people's own sewers on their land to the companies on the other hand. I don't think that the implications of that were ever publicised in the MSM, but the scope for a significant number of property owners to sell valuable drainage rights to developers was lost by it. However, for most homeowners, they will be pleased that they are no longer responsible for maintenance.
As a general point, the canon of English property law is vast. There are landmark statutes, but a huge amount of it is common law, i.e. case law. It probably amounts to more writing than the rest added together. Like most other areas of our law, it is not covered by the Lisbon Treaty either.
Its a non-story. Openreach - not BT - have Code Powers under Sec 16 of the 2003 Telecommunications Act (page 112 if you are interested) and they can already exercise those powers in a court of law if needs be (which they seldom do).
I hate to be picky but here goes:
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Permitted development
A. Development by or on behalf of an electronic communications code operator for the purpose of the operator’s electronic communications network in, on, over or under land controlled by that operator or in accordance with the electronic communications code, consisting of— (a) the installation, alteration or replacement of any electronic communications apparatus, (b) the use of land in an emergency for a period not exceeding 6 months to station and operate moveable electronic communications apparatus required for the replacement of unserviceable electronic communications apparatus, including the provision of moveable structures on the land for the purposes of that use, or (c) development ancillary to radio equipment housing.
Development not permitted
Development not permitted: ground-based apparatus
A.1—(1) Development is not permitted by Class A(a) if—
(a) in the case of the installation of apparatus (other than on a building or other structure) the apparatus, excluding any antenna, would exceed a height of 15 metres above ground level; (b) in the case of the alteration or replacement of apparatus already installed (other than on a building or other structure), the apparatus, excluding any antenna, would when altered or replaced exceed the height of the existing apparatus or a height of 15 metres above ground level, whichever is the greater; or (c) in the case of the alteration or replacement of an existing mast (other than on a building or other structure, on article 2(3) land or on any land which is, or is within, a site of special scientific interest)— (i) the mast, excluding any antenna, would when altered or replaced— (aa) exceed a height of 20 metres above ground level; (bb) at any given height exceed the width of the existing mast at the same height by more than one third; or (ii) where antenna support structures are altered or replaced, the combined width of the mast and any antenna support structures would exceed the combined width of the existing mast and any antenna support structures by more than one third.
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Sorry about all that but it was, in the latter part of my 25 years in comms, my day job!
PC, that is planning law, but does not in itself relate to the acquisition of property rights by the operator.
Schedule IV re s.118 of the Communications Act 2003 details the circumstances and provisions under which land or rights in land may be acquired for installations, as already discussed.
Those processes are open to contest, and the courts or tribunals may well require compensation to be paid too, so an economic calculation would be made by the operators.
That would all take time, and so the pledge seems perhaps to have overreached realistic expectation.
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