Residents Moan After Virgin Media Engineers “burn” Some Hedge Leaves

Residents of Copmanthorpe, a village that sits just outside of York, have managed to find one of the least justified reasons to complain about Virgin Media’s civil engineering teams, which occurred after the local work to deploy new ultrafast broadband and TV cables left some hedge leaves “burnt“.

Apparently a number of hedges in the village have been left with a streak of browned leaves (looks kind of like autumn), which was caused after contractors working for Virgin Media chose to point the hot exhaust for their machinery directly towards the once completely green hedges instead of away from them.

Granted having a streak of mildly browned leaves is annoying but it’s also something that nature should happily clear up of its own accord. We suspect that locals might have been even less pleased had said machinery been put on the road to block traffic. Another question mark is whether or not some of those hedges have overgrown too much of the public footpath and need pruning.

Over the years we’ve had to report on some fairly shoddy street works from different operators but on this occasion we’re struggling to see why there’s such a fuss about it in the The York Press (image by Frank Dwyer). Surely a few browned leaves is a small price to pay for gaining access to 350Mbps broadband and modern cable TV/phone services? It may even help to boost local house values.

A Virgin Media Spokesperson said:

“We apologise to the residents of Copmanthorpe for any inconvenience we may have caused. We are aware of some concerns raised by residents and are working hard to resolve these as soon as possible.”

Mind you other residents did have some complaints about the blocking of pavements, as well as barriers being left on laws and the quality of reinstatement work but unfortunately the original article doesn’t offer any detail on the latter. Some disruption is of course inevitable with major street works and that’s often the price you have to pay for keeping infrastructure up-to-date with the 21st Century.