15 February 2024 , 21:45
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Fed-up neighbours have stopped work by BT Openreach workers by blocking off their own street.
Engineers from the firm arrived to install nine-metre high poles with overhead fibre broadband cables, along with cabling and jointing work. But residents of Griffiths Drive in Southport, Merseyside have blasted the plans - and say they have not been properly consulted.
In protest, they used their cars to block access for the engineers. They say Openreach, which runs the UKs digital network, has refused to run the cables underground - despite objections from the community.
But the BT-owned company says the work is necessary to bring superfast broadband, and that putting them under the street would be too expensive.
The dispute has broken out over Openreach's plans to put up telephone cables for superfast broadband (Andrew Brown/Stand Up For Southport)Darren Boyd-Preece, who lives there, told LancashireLive: "This is all happening because Openreach will not put the cables underground. They want to put poles up and string cables up at a high level to our house."
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He added: "The whole street objected to the planning application that was put in, but they simply ignored us. We have tried our best to engage with Openreach but they will not listen to us and won't even have a conversation. They have refused to listen to our concerns. So now we have taken the only option left to us, which is to collectively use our vehicles to prevent them from gaining access."
People living nearby in Hesketh Drive, Rookery Road and Henley Drive have been told about the upcoming work. The locals said: "We already have Virgin Media fibre broadband installed underground and they install this to your property by running a wire along a fence or wall."
"Residents on other roads have offered to support us and park their cars if we would like to take action. If we do succeed in stopping the poles, in other areas Openreach has instead given up and installed fibre broadband underground instead. They are very ugly structures with potentially 12-20 wires from each pole running into our houses. Once installed it is next to impossible to have them removed."
An Openreach spokesperson said: “Bringing ultrafast broadband to Southport will create huge benefits for families and businesses in the area for decades to come, as well as a welcome boost to the local economy. Wherever possible we use existing network to build our broadband upgrades but in Southport cables are mainly buried direct in the ground. The scale and cost of civil engineering to install new underground ducts throughout the area just isn’t viable and would involve months of road closures and disruptions.
“We know that people feel strongly about poles and understand why. Our local team has engaged extensively with local residents, and also explored every possible option for the build.
“Southport has one of the lowest percentages of full fibre broadband coverage in the UK and the existing copper network there is increasingly unreliable, it also takes longer to repair because of the way it was buried historically, so to halt this upgrade would deprive thousands of other local people who want the new technology, both in Southport and surrounding communities.
“We’ve communicated our decision to continue the build by using our existing network wherever possible and positioning any new poles sensitively.”