Cotswolds Villagers Vent Anger at Dangerous Gigaclear FTTP Rollout

Some residents in the rural Gloucestershire UK village of Chalford have vented anger at Gigaclear after the ISP’s roll-out of a new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network allegedly damaged properties, caused “intolerable vibration” in some homes and a worker had their legs struck by a digger.

Last year Gigaclear handed a £90m civil engineering contract for deploying their network into rural parts of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire (England), which should reach “almost” 70,000 premises, to a company called Complete Utilities (here). The latter was conducting work in Chalford during May 2018 when the problems began (here).

According to one resident, the contractors got off to a bad start by giving hardly any notice of the work and then causing damage (“scuffs and cracks“) to some stone walls (annoying but not the end of the world), as well as creating “intolerable vibration” inside the odd home. The most serious incident then occurred a few days later when a worker, lying on his stomach in the road next to a trench, was struck on his legs by a digger.

Locals suggest that the accident happened because there were too many workers and too much machinery operating in a confined space.

A Spokesperson for Gigaclear said:

“We apologise for any disruption caused to local residents during the installation of our full fibre broadband network.

We always aim to ensure that all work is carried out to the highest standards with safety front of mind, whilst keeping any disruption to a minimum.

We have worked with Complete Utilities, the contractor used to lay the fibre cables, to address this and other concerns raised by residents, and we can confirm that each one has been taken very seriously and is being addressed appropriately.”

At the time of writing it’s unclear precisely what injuries the worker sustained and what his or her condition is, although we hope they’re recovering and that the damage wasn’t too bad. The original story suggests that his “legs [were] run over by a digger” (ouch!) and generally that doesn’t usually end too well, but it’s later suggested by the Stroud News & Journal that this was only a “minor leg injury” (confusing).