Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Government takes to monitor how BT complies with Ofcom regulations in maintaining public telephone boxes and ensuring that those telephone boxes remain operational.

Under its Universal Service obligations, BT must provide public call boxes in order to meet the reasonable needs of users in terms of geographical coverage, the number of public call boxes and the quality of call box services. The Government provides the powers for Ofcom to set such conditions under section 45 of the Communications Act 2003.

Compliance with Ofcom regulations is a matter for Ofcom and any evidence that BT is not complying with its published criteria should be presented to Ofcom to investigate.