Telegraph Poles: Birmingham

Debate between Tahir Ali and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

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.

[Tahir Ali]

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?

[Chris Bryant]

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.