5G Masts: Greater Manchester

Debate between Jim McMahon and Mark Logan

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of 5G mast installations on communities in Greater Manchester.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue, and appreciate the time given by those who are here today and by the Minister who will reply to the debate.

The debate covers the powers given to telecommunication companies to instal infrastructure on and around a public highway in residential areas, and covers the roll-out of 5G and wireless broadband through masts, cabinets and telegraph poles across Greater Manchester. For Oldham, that includes installations primarily by IX Wireless, BT and Vodafone.

The British people work hard to provide a good life for themselves and their families. Many are first or second-generation homeowners, investing everything they have to form a community with others who share the same hopes, fears and determination to make it the best it can be. Those very places, however, are seeing change across the board, on the matter we are here to talk about, but also the loss of local pubs, too often being converted to houses in multiple occupation, and even family homes lost to the same use. There is a decline of many high streets and town centres and loss of community facilities that ought to bind people together.

Rather than giving people power in the places where they live, the past 14 years have seen power taken away from communities. It is that issue, perhaps known only to those who are impacted directly, that must be addressed. We are here to discuss the installation of equipment, whether 5G or wireless broadband, and I shall cover three main areas: first, planning policy and permitted development; secondly, guidance on the siting of cabinets and poles; and thirdly, access to the existing network. On planning policy and permitted development, I ask Members to imagine a 15-metre mast and cabinets being placed outside their home.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

I thank my fellow Greater Manchester MP for raising such an important debate. I have residents in Astley Bridge, Bradshaw, Harwood, Bromley Cross and Egerton who are royally peeved off about the installation of some of these masts, which are going up around the constituency. As the hon. Member said, they can be 15 metres high, looking like something out of a North Korean military base. My residents are completely opposed to this. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government and these providers, such as IX Wireless, need to listen more to residents, and should go through a consultation process?

[Jim McMahon]

I share entirely those concerns about the impact. I will come on to some of the interventions we made in Oldham to try to bridge that divide on consultation, communication and co-production.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

Absolutely—I recognise the impact of these masts. I spoke to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) about her private Member’s Bill, which is scheduled for debate. The general view is that it is quite far down the Order Paper and it would require the Government to lend their support for it to progress it. I believe that there is cross-party support for such a measure. Across the political spectrum, there is a need to address the imbalance affecting local people, and I hope that the Minister will consider the matter.

The wi-fi companies are not doing anything that is not allowed or permitted by the Government—that is the point. These changes were introduced in 2019 in the national planning policy framework, which has created this permitted development. The impact has been the complete removal of the requirement to seek prior permission from the local authority, along with the public consultation that would go alongside that.

Operators not only have free rein on the siting of masts but, with the permissions that are in place, they can also send cables over people’s homes with a clearance of just 2 metres without requiring any further permissions or legal agreement. Someone can have a mast erected outside their home and the cable can go across their roof, and they have no legal right to stop that at all, because it is all permitted development and it is all licensed under the regulator.

The reality is that councils are left powerless and communities are left voiceless. On the siting of cabinets and poles, the House of Commons Library is clear:

“The Government’s 2016 cabinet and pole siting code of practice states that companies should consult with local residents, but it is entirely voluntary. Broadband companies are not legally required to follow the code of practice and Ofcom, the regulator, does not have the power to enforce it.”

Councils are left powerless, communities are left voiceless and the regulator is left without the power to regulate.

Moreover, we know that there is scope to upgrade the current 4G masts rather than having additional 5G ones. Working in this way would minimise the disruption caused by new installations. This has been the case with, say, BT locally in Oldham.

What about shared use? What many people find staggering is how weak the requirement for shared networks and facilities really is. First, the requirement to share existing equipment only rests with BT Openreach; in areas such as ours, where there is cable, it does not rest with Virgin Media, with what was then the 9X network or with any other new operators coming into the market. The operators themselves say that that is nonsense. Why not allow just one 15-metre mast, rather than a second, or a third, to go alongside it, because under these rules it is not just one operator that can instal equipment? Another one can come along, then another one, and another one, and there is no requirement at all to make them work together so that they share the equipment that is installed. The operators say that is wrong and I think local people say it is wrong too.

What happens if any one of these companies, or all of these companies, go bust? Who would be responsible for the legacy equipment that is then left on the highway? The fact is that the responsibility falls to the local council, which had no say in the equipment being installed to begin with, but which now has the financial liability placed on it to deal with the aftermath.

We also need to consider the rapid pace of change in technology. SpaceX is significantly reducing the cost of its Starlink satellite system, and other companies will follow—none of us knows today what practical commercial lifespan the current 5G masts and fixed wireless units will have in the future, given the rate of technological change and the technology that is coming down the line.

The community impact is heavy for many people in Greater Manchester, including constituents of mine in Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton. Many of the 5G masts installed by Vodafone, for instance, are on main roads or junctions, but that is not always the case. The masts are large and they change the character of an area. For instance, at Chadderton Hall Park, where the installation abuts a children’s play area and community café, no effort whatsoever was made to minimise the impact on visual amenity, so houses that once looked out on a very beautiful park across the road now look out on the huge telephone equipment that has been installed.

However, it has to be said that most complaints in Oldham West, Chadderton and Royston relate to IX Wireless broadband installations. Some of those are up to 15 metres high, and mast installations do not require any kind of prior planning approval from the council.

I have raised the issue constantly and have pushed for change. I reached out to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in April last year, but did not even receive a response on this important issue. That fuelled the mistrust that is already there in the local community. It was central Government who brushed local communities to one side and ignored legitimate representations from MPs, but it did not help—I will be blunt about this—that the same company was recently reported to have paid donations of £138,000 to 24 Tory MPs in the region. At a point when we should be rebuilding trust in politics, things like that undermine that effort.

My approach is always that we have to bring competing interests together to find common ground. On that issue, we have to find a way that balances the need to expand connectivity with the need to bring local people on board. I wrote to Oldham Council and IX Wireless asking for intervention and a different approach. I will be honest that it was not without challenges, as is often the case with these things, but eventually we got an agreement on a more inclusive way forward, first by working through sites that were of concern. In July, we held a meeting with the support of my fantastic constituency staff in Chadderton town hall, where we held a residents workshop to arbitrate between the two sides. I am grateful to BBC Radio Manchester for reporting on the same issue late last year. The workshop gave an opportunity for residents to meet IX Wireless and go through its impacts site by site. Some changes were made, such as using more underground cabling, relocating cabinets and masts or removing the need for them at all.

[Mark Logan]

The hon. Member is being generous in giving way again. We have been successful on a couple of occasions in relocating the masts, with one example in Bradshaw recently, but unfortunately it was moved only 50 metres. We have to keep constant pressure on IX Wireless. The same is true in Egerton, where Councillor Nadim Muslim was successful in ensuring that a pole was not erected there. What level of success has the hon. Member had in ensuring that since July’s meetings the masts are not placed where residents do not want them?

[Jim McMahon]

The approach we tried to take was, where possible, to use the underground ducting that was there through the BT Openreach system. We were able to remove some masts and cabinets completely because of that. Residents were clearly delighted that the proposed cabinet was eventually withdrawn. In some cases, we were able to move a mast around the corner if that meant it would be near a garage site, rather than outside somebody’s living room window. It would still be in the locality, but at least its impact would be diminished.

In other cases, where equipment could not be moved at all, we even got an agreement to paint it the colour of the background—if it was against a wall to paint it the colour of the wall, or if it was by a park to paint it green like the park—or even to be creative. We have suggested to IX Wireless that Royton has a proud history of remembering its veterans, and the British Legion in Royton have done a fantastic job pulling together the histories of servicemen who lost their lives in the second world war. The company is open to vinyl-wrapping some of the cabinets that cannot be moved to commemorate the sacrifice people made for our freedom. If we can secure a compromise like that, we can bring people with us.

In the end, some people just do not want this equipment outside their home, and that is difficult, but we should always try to find common ground. What I struggle with is that the system is almost designed to write local people out of the process. At a time when there is so much mistrust in politics and politicians, we should be using every opportunity to bring people together in the same room to work through these difficult issues together. Hopefully I have explained what we were able to do in my constituency, thanks to the hard work of my staff and the willingness of the operator and the local authority, but it should not be voluntary. We should have that hard-wired into what we do.

We have been able to make a degree of progress. The law does not require prior approval, but we have managed to get an agreement with IX Wireless and Oldham Council that they will apply as if they were required to have it. They will make the application and give the notice, and the public consultation that would be natural and normal in a planning application will take place as part of that process. Even though it is not required, we see that process under way in Oldham. It is important that a consultation is genuine, and not just an admin process that does not deliver the outcome that local people want. It must be seen as a partnership.

There remains work to be done. Although we have made progress, I urge IX Wireless to remove, relocate or redesign the remaining contentious proposed installations, including one on Denbydale Way in Royton, where local people have a legitimate concern about its implications and disruption to the street scene in that area. Digital inclusion should enhance communities and bring people together. It should not increase tensions and hurt our neighbourhoods. Consistent Conservative top-down implementation has to change, and community power must be respected—not to block, but to build the future together.