Everyone wants better, faster, more reliable services, and access to the internet is no exception. But what started as a rumour that BT Openreach were about to bring full fibre to Meir Park has, over the last few months, turned into a potential plan to cover the estate with telegraph poles to achieve this.
Meir Park is an estate blessed with quite a lot of residents with long memories of living here - and subsequently it's become apparent that at the time of design and construction, it was an estate ahead of its time. Planned as a garden village around the the principle of strong aesthetic appeal, provision was made for underground ducting right across the estate so there would never be a need for telegraph poles or similar here.
BT Openreach's plans run right through what makes Meir Park so special.
From the start, BT Openreach have chosen not to engage with the community - notices have appeared on streetlamps, and whilst you can raise a concern about visual appearance and location, the standard response comes back that they are acting under permitted development and can do this anyway.
The wording of these responses reveals that BT Openreach do not know the history of Meir Park's construction and have not taken the time to learn that at least two other providers have already utilised the underground ducting, which makes the threatened inconvenience of digging up pavements a very hollow threat in a place that has already experienced this.
Because they are operating under 'permitted development', they do not require planning permission, and any conditions put on the work by the City Council can be ignored. You can read more detail on this by following this link to an excellent House of Commons library briefing on Broadband Companies and Telegraph Poles.
As your local councillor, I have managed to engage with an 'Executive Complaints Manager' who has been assigned to me. Despite trying to reiterate to him these points, we have reached stalemate. Requests for a list of telegraph pole locations, meetings with the local BT manager, or even communication directly with residents has been ignored.
On our last call, just over a week ago, he suggested that he thought we were near Birmingham, and when I advised that I personally knew of nearly 50 residents who had raised concerns directly, he seemed shocked. He did however say that should a petition be submitted, demonstrating the scale of opposition, this may well lead to a change of mind around the roll out.
So today I am launching a petition to say 'No to Telegraph Poles - Yes to Keeping Meir Park's Clear Views' for submission to BT Openreach. We only have a small window of time to do this to ensure BT Openreach hear our views at the end of June.
Whilst the petition is being run via my website, the data contained will be deleted on 30th September - you can though sign up for my newsletter to hear more from me about what else I am doing locally!
