Telegraph Poles: Birmingham

16:23:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered telegraph poles in Birmingham. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, and I welcome the Minister to his place. I want to thank him, as I know he has been working extremely hard on the issue by meeting MPs and working with the industry and regulators. The installation of telegraph poles is an issue that has been landing in the inboxes of MPs across the House and from across the country. In view of that, I hope he does not mind my summoning him to Westminster Hall to take more questions. I pay tribute to the many constituents I have worked with on the issue over the past two years, including the residents of Vernon Road, Montague Road in Edgbaston, Chad Road, Clarendon Road, Gravel Bank in Bartley Green, and Perrott’s Folly near the Waterworks tower. In particular, I pay tribute to the campaigning of my constituent Lizzy Jordan, who has left no stone unturned in trying to engage with the provider, Brsk, about which I will say more in a moment. Lizzy and our local residents have been a powerhouse. Last year, we managed to convince Brsk to move a pole in front of Perrott’s Folly and the Waterworks tower. This has a huge significance to our heritage, as the towers inspired JRR Tolkien in “The Lord of the Rings”. We have been pushing Brsk to do right by the residents in our area, but it is exhausting work. Over the past two years, I have engaged with, sent numerous emails to and met Brsk’s west midlands representatives. I joined a resident-led protest against Brsk installing poles outside Perrott’s Folly in my North Edgbaston ward. I have convened and attended a meeting between residents and Brsk about Vernon Road, Clarendon Road and Montague Road. I have written to the last Government and this on several occasions, and submitted evidence ahead of MPs’ roundtables on the issue. I have raised my concerns with Ofcom through letters, and I continue to support my constituents with casework. I think we all agree that it should not take a well-organised community campaign and an active local MP to get a provider to meet its statutory duties, and that is why I have called today’s debate. I want to say that I and the vast majority of my constituents support the roll-out of new broadband infrastructure. The importance of improving broadband speeds and access to the internet should not be underestimated. Nearly all aspects of our everyday lives —education, work, communication, entertainment—are made possible by the continuous expansion and upgrading of telecoms networks. There are significant digital dark spots in my constituency, such as in North Edgbaston and parts of Harborne, Quinton, Edgbaston and Bartley Green especially. In several areas, superfast broadband coverage is among the worst 10% of areas in the UK. According to recently published House of Commons Library data, 3.8% of lines across my constituency do not even have 10 megabits per second download speeds, with notable clusters of poor coverage in the most deprived areas, such as Bartley Green, and I have asked Brsk to focus on that area. I am not quick to forget how damaging the pandemic was for many of our children. Particularly in deprived areas with poor connections, we were unable to access remote learning. I and the vast majority of my constituents understand that the roll-out will provide a boost to our economy and set Britain up for the rest of this digital century. This infrastructure will provide opportunities and lower prices, and it can improve people’s lives, but there are ways of going about it. First, we should focus on areas that do not have coverage, not those that do. As the Minister has himself acknowledged, while the majority of providers are trying to do right by local people by making efforts to consult and not put up poles, some providers in my constituency such as Brsk have occasionally behaved like cowboys by not using existing infrastructure, failing to consult residents with the adequate 28 days’ notice, failing to observe the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 requirements to ensure that pathways are clear and accessible until they are told to do so, failing to secure the right council permits for works, and putting up poles everywhere as the only means to address coverage. Given that Brsk’s business is communications, it is ironic how poor it has been at communicating with its stakeholders. The crux of the issue is that such companies are not exploring alternatives to poles or using existing infrastructure when they can. To give some of many examples—

Order. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes.

16:27:00

16:40:00

Order. The debate may now continue until 5.08 pm.

The crux of the issue is that these companies are not exploring alternatives to poles or using existing infrastructure when they can. I will give some of many examples. Freedom of information requests to our local council revealed that Brsk did not need to put up poles on Clarendon Road in my constituency, because it could have utilised existing ducts—but it did so anyway, ignoring that fact. Vernon Road is another example; BT installed full-fibre to St Paul’s school for girls at that location without any requirement for poles, yet a constituent came to my surgery on Friday to tell me that another pole had gone up, with a notice on the council’s planning portal appearing only after the pole had been erected. That is even after the Minister’s meeting with Brsk. I have met Brsk and exchanged exhaustive correspondence on these issues. What has struck me in my dealings with the firm is the lack of policy or strategy for work in my constituency. Poles are supposed to be a last resort, but even where they are not needed, like on Vernon Road, several go up anyway. There are now four on that road. Frequently, when issues are raised, they are not listened to. I asked Brsk for a map of where it is planning to roll out poles in my constituency, and it could not give me one. There is either a plan that it will not share or there really is no strategic focus on where the infrastructure is needed. My constituents have had similar experiences. An elderly constituent wrote to me earlier this year, deeply worried that a Brsk telegraph pole on an adjoining road, installed less than a metre from her back garden fence, was so close that it could easily provide burglars with access to her property. She told me she lives in perpetual fear that her house could be broken into. More importantly, that was avoidable. Had Brsk simply made an effort to engage first with residents about changes in their community, she would not have been left in that situation.

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene. She makes a powerful point on behalf of her constituents. In my constituency, we have a similar situation in Stourport-on-Severn, where firms are using permitted development rights in areas where residents are not even allowed to put up a garden fence because of planning approvals. Does she agree that it is a cynical attempt by many of these providers to build an infrastructure that provides capital value that can be sold on? That is less to do with delivering full-fibre broadband than with making money in the short term for those operators.

I thank the hon. Member for that important point about the business model. There are alternative ways to implement the infrastructure. In areas like his, this activity does not respect the environment, heritage or planning laws, and we end up with poles erected. Some of them do not even have any lines going through them, which just goes to show that the existing infrastructure meant there was no need for that, but, as he says, it is clearly quite a lucrative business model to sell on the new infrastructure.

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. We had similar issues with Brsk when it went on to an unadopted road in a conservation area and started erecting poles. My constituents, Dr Carole McKeown —the secretary for Reddings and Amesbury Road residents association—and her neighbour came to see me. Following the intervention of the Minister, Brsk has agreed to remove the poles, but the point remains that the consultation with and notification of the residents did not happen. These are not isolated incidents. Does my hon. Friend agree that there needs to be tougher action against companies that go about their business without any adherence to the code of conduct?

I know that the Minister, in summing up, will address that point, because he has been proactive in meeting the regulator and the companies tasked with installing this infrastructure. He has already given them a clear indication of where the Government will go next if they do not adhere to the code. I also know that he has met Brsk since the previous debate on the issue; I thank him for that. I was interested to read confirmation that Brsk now has guaranteed access to BT Openreach infrastructure to install broadband lines underground, so why is it not doing so? It is not its business model—that is why it is not doing it. I would be interested to learn from the Minister when that was agreed, because Brsk has not been taking advantage of that in my constituency to date. Some providers are much better at this. I want to ensure that not everybody is painted with the same brush. There are some very good providers. Last year, broadband infrastructure carried out by Pipeline Utilities on behalf of Grain Connect left Willow Avenue in my constituency with some dreadful retarmacking, as well as broken and cracked paving slabs. When I wrote to the organisation about this, it confirmed that the site was inspected, and agreed to replace and relay the broken paving slabs and tarmac. That is exactly how we should be proceeding. My experience with Brsk has been very different. Repeatedly, it will arrive in an area to erect new broadband infrastructure poles without properly consulting residents or me. We have seen that behaviour on Vernon Road, Clarendon Road, Chad Road and Stirling Road. The company’s idea of consultation appears to be to put up a notice stating its intention to put up another pole—in some cases, with little to no consultation period. Sometimes, I am told, a notice has not gone up at all, despite my best efforts and those of my constituents to raise concerns about the siting of the poles. We have been ignored. This means that the infrastructure ends up causing issues that could have been foreseen or avoided if there were proper consultation. Poles have been erected in the middle of pavements, obstructing prams, wheelchairs and people with mobility issues. There have been attempts to erect unsightly poles in front of listed buildings, instead of exploring other options. Some roads are being peppered with poles, even when we are told they are a last resort. It is time for stronger action. Clearly, Brsk is not heeding Government advice. As we all know, since the rules were changed by the previous Government in 2016, there is no requirement for planning permission for poles up to 15 metres in height, and there is no legal requirement for consultation with local residents and businesses. Good practice asks telecoms communications operators to notify the council of their intention to install a pole, as well as to advertise their development proposal within the vicinity of the site, usually via a site notice, but in reality there is no real opportunity to object to an installation. There needs to be a strategy that targets areas of need and uses existing infrastructure. We are all familiar with the fact that the Electronic Communications Code (Conditions and Restrictions) Regulations 2003 require that, among other things, operators must share apparatus where possible, and use underground rather than overground lines where they can—yet that is not happening in practice. I know roads where as many as five or six poles have been erected. It is ugly, disruptive and excessive, and it impacts on house prices. As these issues are a matter for the regulator, Ofcom, I seek the Minister’s clarification on what monitoring of these requirements is being carried out to ensure that network providers collaborate and share network infrastructure, and what action Ofcom has been taking against providers who have been found to not comply. When I wrote to Ofcom, it said its role is “limited to enforcement of the Regulations” and that, under those, “operators have significant flexibility…to put up their own poles.” I know that the Minister has been looking at a revision of the code of practice. We would be grateful if he could say more on that. I also welcome that he has stated that he reserves the right to change the law in this area. It strikes me that stronger adherence to the regulations on sharing infrastructure is one of those rare examples where stronger regulation will actually save companies and consumers money. Surely it is cheaper for companies to co-ordinate with one another over the sharing of infrastructure than to erect new poles every time they need a new node for their network. It is baffling and frustrating that providers such as Brsk have not been more proactive in anticipating the concerns of the public before Ofcom has had to get involved. Fundamentally, my constituents of Birmingham Edgbaston are asking for respect: respect to influence decisions, and to ensure that broadband infrastructure is implemented in a way that respects their local environment, heritage and public interest. I would be grateful if the Minister could provide an update on work to amend and strengthen the code of practice, so that operators respond to and engage in good faith with residents. I would also be keen to hear the outcome of his recent engagement with Brsk, having shared with him my experience of dealing with it, and to understand what more we can do to ensure that providers work together to share infrastructure, and that the requirements under the 2003 regulations are adhered to and enforced. I thank the Minister for his attention and look forward to working with him.

16:49:00

It is a great delight to sit under your chairpersonship, Ms Vaz. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this debate. I think she knows that she is one of my favourite MPs; we have canvassed together often in variety of places, so it is a great delight to hear from her. My hon. Friend speaks of being an active constituency MP, and that is precisely what she has evidenced. She is not alone on this issue. The list of MPs who want to talk to me about ducts and poles is quite long, because a lot of people are concerned. They fully understand, as she has laid out, that we want to roll out better infrastructure. If we are going to have the digital economy that we want for the future and if we are to compete with other countries around the world, we certainly have to get digital infrastructure rolled out. Obviously, the Government are not going to pay for all of that—that would be a very big ticket item—so we want as much of this as possible to happen on a commercial basis, and I will refer in a moment to the comments of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) about the business model that people may be adopting. We also do not want to have a single operator delivering for the whole country, which is why it is important to have a degree of competition. When I was in opposition, I was very opposed to the idea of monopoly in provision through Openreach or, for that matter, any other player simply because monopoly does not tend to be good for consumers. It tends also to make an incumbent lazy, and it can lead to anti-competitive practices. For all those reasons, we have ended up with the system that we have, and we want to roll out gigabit-capable broadband to as much of the country as possible. The Government will intervene in the areas where that will not happen commercially, but I say to the hon. Member for Wyre Forest and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston that we have to be a bit careful about saying, “It’s disgraceful that these people are making money”, because if they did not make money, they would not be rolling it out on a commercial basis and then we might have to intervene a great deal more in the market. But there is a countervailing argument: if operators behave in a way that lacks compassion or sensitivity to the local situation, it is extremely unlikely that anybody in that local community is going to buy their products, so it could destroy their commercial agendas and business strategies if they are so high-handed in their approaches to local communities when it comes to the siting of poles and so on.

I thank the Minister for his letter, which was incredibly helpful; I am grateful to him for engaging on this. The point I was making was not that the business model is about a cash flow revenue coming from the delivery of broadband, but that some of these businesses are cynically creating a capital asset that they then want to sell off. It is the infrastructure asset, not the cash flow, that they are after. That is where we get this competition of people building out the poles to create a capital value asset, not a cash flow value asset.

I do not know whether that is right or not, so I will reserve judgment, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. It is certainly true that there may be some consolidation in the market in the next 18 months to two years. Some people have been expecting that before now. Whether that would apply to Brsk or not, I have not the faintest idea, but the point remains that, if these organisations are to have a successful business model, in the end they do need to be able to sell take-up. One thing that is missing from this whole conversation is an explanation to the public of why on earth anybody might need fibre. Notwithstanding the areas in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston where they do not even have 10 megabits per second, which I hope we might be able to do something about in the near future, lots of people say, “Well, I’ve already got 100 megabits per second, so why on earth would I need a gigabit per second? Incidentally, I don’t know what a megabit per second is anyway.” In that world, we have to do a great deal more education about what the future is going to look like. It is certainly true that all the apps and the IT that the country and the Government are increasingly relying on are increasingly hungry for bandwidth; there is no way of avoiding that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right in saying that we need to develop this infrastructure. This Government have been very clear, and the previous Government were relatively clear, that we wanted this infrastructure to progress in a way that was sensitive to local communities. That meant that we had to have proper consultation and to be careful about the siting of poles. We wanted to encourage co-operation and collaboration between different players in the market, so that roads were not dug up two years in a row or three months after the last company dug it up, for example. All that was laid out in the original guidance in 2016. Incidentally, that guidance was provided not by the Government but by the industry. This is an important point: the industry is currently looking at revising that code. It is very close to a revised version. I do not think that that is quite ready yet, but I anticipate that it might come in the new year. The simple point that I have made repeatedly to all the operators in this field is that if they want people to take up their service and buy their product, they have to take people with them. At our meeting with Brsk last week, Brsk made it clear that if all the members of a community, especially one cut off from everywhere else and not on the way to another place, said, “Look, we don’t want this,” it would work out that there was no point putting in poles, digging up the road or whatever, because there would not be any take-up of its services from that community in future. It would simply say, “All right, fine. We’re not going there.” As I say, the difficulty lies where one road leads—as is often the case—to another, and the people on the next bit of road still want the roll-out even if the people on the first bit do not.

I thank the Minister for his intervention with Brsk and for getting the officers in for a chat with MPs last week, and I welcome what has happened since in my constituency. Does he agree that where existing underground infrastructure is already available, companies should be forced to use that rather than erecting poles that no one really wants or likes?

Let me be 100% clear: where there is existing infrastructure—ducts under the road or whatever —that can be used. In fact, it should be used and different companies should collaborate to make that happen. I am 100% clear that existing infrastructure should and must be used. There are a few caveats, as the companies themselves would advance. Sometimes people think there is a duct when there is only a cable that has been laid straight into the mud underneath. Alternatively, the pavement might now be so full of different things, including gas connections, water connections, electricity connections and so on, that there is no space for anything else to be ducted through, or the duct sleeve is so full that nothing else can be put in and another sleeve cannot be put in either. I know that is quite a long set of caveats, but those are the realities of the situation. The commercial reality is that inserting a new duct—that is, digging up the road and putting everything underground —might be very attractive to everybody in the community, but it is nine or 10 times more expensive than putting things on poles. If we want commercial operators to roll things out, there are certain situations where there are going to be poles. I cannot hide that from anybody; it is a simple reality. As I was saying earlier, the cabinet siting and pole siting code of practice was issued in November 2016. It sets out guidance on best practice relating to deployment, encouraging operators to site apparatus responsibly and to engage proactively with local authorities and the local community. However, some of the things that I have seen being put in—including by Brsk; not often by many other operators—are clearly in the middle of a pathway or driveway, or in other places that are completely inappropriate. As I understood it in our meeting last week, and indeed in the exchange of letters after that meeting, Brsk committed to change its policy in such situations. At that meeting, Brsk also undertook to engage in far more proper consultation with people. It will not just put up a sign saying, “We are about to put a pole here,” and then put a pole up the next day; it will engage in proper consultation, which means going door to door and explaining things to people. In many areas, Brsk will bring the local community together for a public meeting. One Member who came to that meeting with Brsk last week said that there had been such a public meeting in their constituency. It had been very effective and people understood the quid pro quo, which was that if there was no means of doing something by ducting, there would have to be poles; if people did not want poles, they would not get the roll-out of fibre; and other operators were not operating in that field. People said, “Okay, well in that set of circumstances, we still want this roll-out to happen, so we will live with poles.” I think most people can live with that model, but even when that is agreed, we still have to make sure that we do not put poles in the middle of someone’s driveway or where they will obstruct people and not meet the requirements of the disability measures in the Equality Act 2010. As I said earlier, I know the industry has been working together closely. It is not easy or simple to get commercial operators that have their own investors and shareholders in competition with one another to sit down to agree a new guide and a new code of practice, so I pay tribute to everybody at the Independent Networks Co-operative Association for engaging in that way. The vast majority of the altnet companies engaged in that activity are absolutely determined. They want to take the community with them because they want to be able to sell their product, and because they are responsible players in the market. I pay tribute to them where they have managed to do that. As Brsk knows, we will hold its feet to the fire on all the commitments that it has made in private meetings with me, in the meetings with MPs that we held last week, and in writing. Before it starts rolling out in a particular area, it needs to explore far more thoroughly what ducting might be available, which might be through BT Openreach or Virgin. It will consult properly in a local area where people lobby and argue that the siting of a pole is particularly inappropriate. It will look at moving it in so far as it possibly can.

Does the Minister agree that the siting of poles is particularly important when we consider national landscapes? It needs to take into account the broader context. Does he also agree that, where local communities are willing to engage with operators and local authorities to fund undergrounding, that would be a good approach?

That is the first time that anybody has come to me and said that a local community would fund the ducting, which is an expensive business. All sorts of competition issues might then arise. I am hesitant to advance a yes or a no to that, because one would have to explore whether that was in effect a state subsidy, how that would be provided and what kind of contract there would be for maintenance of the duct—I can foresee all sorts of problems. I am not trying to be a part of the blob, but simply to be as clear as I can about what is possible and what is not. The hon. Member makes an important point about the desirability of poles in areas of natural beauty and whether we can or cannot have poles. I have seen many different instances—I have tried to go through as many of them as possible as a Minister—such as where people thought the issue was about a duct that somebody was refusing to use, and it turns out it is not a duct at all but a cable laid in sand, so I am quite hesitant about holding forth on where we can or absolutely cannot have a pole. In case anybody thinks I am being nimbyish, I have poles in my street, and I am about to have another set of poles in my street. I am relatively chilled about that, but I fully understand the issue where someone has never had a pole in their street. Part of the area’s beauty is that it looks remarkably like it did in the 18th or 19th century, and people want to preserve it that way. The downside is that commercially they will probably not get gigabit-capable and fibre-based broadband, which might be more of a problem for the community than having the poles. I think I have exhausted the subject, unless anybody else wants to have a go at me. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston. I am sure that we will return to the issue as many times as necessary if Brsk refuses to fulfil its promises. I believe that when we sat down with the senior management, they were sincere and honest in the commitment that they were making, and that they did not have as full an understanding of people’s feelings in some communities as they needed to have. As I promised my favourite MP—I cannot say that too often—I will hold the company’s feet to the fire throughout. Question put and agreed to.

17:04:00