Carlisle Court Fines Virgin Media UK £385K for Unsafe Street Work

A couple of months ago we reported that Virgin Media was facing 14 alleged safety breaches in the Carlisle Magistrates’ Court, which related to the expansion of their cable broadband and TV network in Cumbria. This week the ISP admitted to seven offences and was fined £385,000.

We first covered the problems that Virgin Media’s civil engineering teams had created around Carlise in July 2017 (here). At the time the local authority claimed that their quality of work had left much to be desired after 400 defects were logged in a single year. As a result the council was having to inspect 90% (instead of the “usual” 10%) of related street works, while also instructing a lot of repairs.

Crucially some of the problems centred around the unsafe condition that certain locations had been left in as part of the street works, such as those where holes had been exposed or poorly protected in the pavement, a lack of safe alternative walkways for pedestrians or paving slabs being left to stick up by as much as 2 inches. A number of residents also complained about suffering accidents as a result of the work.

As such it came as little surprise when, during March 2018, Virgin were hauled before the courts and accused of breaching the 1991 New Road and Street Works Act in 14 locations (here). The 1991 act is designed to protect the structure of the street and the apparatus in it, as well as to ensure safety (workers and residents) and to minimise the inconvenience for people using a street (particularly those with a disability).

This week Virgin admitted to 7 of the 14 offences relating to poorly guarded or signposted works in Scalegate Road, Beaconsfield Street, Thirlmere Street, Uldale Road, Kirklands Road and two sites in Upperby Road (here). This has resulted in them being hit with one of the biggest ever fines for a utilities deployment of new UK broadband infrastructure (£385,000).

A Spokesperson for Virgin Media said:

“We apologise to Cumbria County Council and the local residents affected by the works carried out by contract partners on behalf of Virgin Media.

While we continue to expand our fibre broadband network to more homes across the country we aim to minimise any disruption caused.

In this case we fell short of the high standards we set ourselves and those partners who work with us.”

On top of the fine Virgin will also have to pay prosecution costs of £3,500 and a £170 victim surcharge. We note that some people pointed the finger of blame for all this at the operator’s third-party contractors from outside town, while the local ones were allegedly said to be doing a better job. A spokesman for the council said: “We are pleased with the outcome of this case. Utilities working on the public highway must ensure they work in a safe manner.”

The situation has obviously caused some problems for the operator’s plan to extend their 350Mbps capable broadband and cable TV network to an additional 22,000 premises in the city (here), although they appear to have already completed most or all of this deployment.

Generally councils, which are also at risk of legal action from residents when unsafe conditions arise, will only go to court as a last resort. Usually we’d say that building new fibre optic infrastructure is inherently very disruptive and in the end such disruption is a small price to pay for gaining access to an ultrafast broadband network. But in this case the situation appears to have been much more serious than we’ve seen elsewhere.

Meanwhile Virgin Media recently reported (here) that their £3bn Project Lightning network expansion, which reflects a mix of their EuroDOCSIS based Hybrid Fibre Coax and “full fibre” FTTP infrastructure, had completed about 1.2 million premises of their 4 million target (expected to cover 60% of the UK at completion). Unfortunately progress is still running a fair bit behind their earlier expectations.