Home
 » ISP News, Key Developments » 
Sponsored Links

UK Landowners Revise Wayleave Agreement to Help Rural Broadband

Wednesday, Jun 20th, 2018 (10:54 am) - Score 4,078

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and National Farmers Union (NFU) have today updated their existing wayleave framework for ISPs, which was first agreed in 2013 (here) and has now been revised to help “speed up rural broadband roll-out” and reflect recent changes in UK law.

Wayleaves are notoriously complicated and often costly legal agreements, which grant special access to land or buildings for the deployment and management of new infrastructure, such as running a new fibre optic cable through farmers’ fields or constructing mobile masts etc.

In the past this was complicated by the fact that each landowner required a separate approach and compensation, which could in some cases result in costs that quickly spiralled out of control (making such deployments unviable for broadband ISPs and mobile operators). The NFU and CLA attempted to tackle this via a standard agreement in 2013 but since then there have been some big changes.

The most recent change was the introduction of a revised Electronic Communications Code (here), which among other things introduced measures to help telecoms operators reach agreements with landowners that could see them paying about the same amount as utility providers (water, electricity etc.), who often pay a lot less. This approach was not universally popular with many rural landowners due, in part, to a fear of lost income.

Nevertheless the joint CLA and NFU wayleave agreement has now been revised and is available to all broadband infrastructure providers, which they claim is “designed to make it easier for landowners and broadband providers to reach agreement.”

Mark Bridgeman, CLA Deputy President, said:

“People living and working in rural areas have fought long and hard for better broadband provision, and the wayleave agreement that we announce today will help speed up fixed line broadband delivery without eroding property rights. It creates a national framework that provides certainty for individual landowners and smooths the way for faster roll-out.

This revised national Rural Communications Agreement is the culmination of more than a year’s work, and we are pleased to announce this positive step forwards. But there is more work to do: the CLA will keep the pressure on broadband providers to deliver the fast, affordable and reliable connections that the countryside needs, and we will hold Government to their promise of a Universal Service Obligation of 10Mbps by 2020.”

The updated agreement suggests advisory payment rates for the installation of equipment that landowners can enter into with companies wishing to install a new broadband network. The agreement also sets out the rights and responsibilities of both landowners and broadband operators.

The suggested rates and agreements could help to cut down the time and cost of negotiating individual wayleaves, making it easier and more cost effective to deploy the infrastructure. On the other hand we note that the “advisory rates of payment” for the installation of new underground digital infrastructure on private land has risen by about 4% since 2012.

Despite this it appears as if UK ISP Gigaclear, which has been busy deploying their 1Gbps+ capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network out to many parts of rural England, is broadly supportive of the change.

Matthew Hare, CEO of Gigaclear, said:

“The rural network build programme that Gigaclear already has underway will reach over 300,000 homes and businesses by 2021. This agreement simplifies and streamlines the agreement of wayleave requests.”

Unfortunately the revised wayleave agreement doesn’t appear to be available to the public, at least we couldn’t easily find a copy of it on either the NFU or CLA’s website and as such we can’t examine the likely impact. However the fact that Gigaclear has lent their support suggests that this is likely to be a more welcome change than previous attempts. As usual, time will tell.

We should add that the CLA represents around 30,000 landowners, farmers and rural businesses across England and Wales. Meanwhile the NFU similarly represents around 55,000 members in England and Wales, involved in 46,000 farming businesses.

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
2 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Sandra McClure says:

    I live in a rural area butility the land has a private owner which gigaclear are in negotiations with them with very little progress I hope something will happen soon as I do not get a signal and most of the time cannot get online or it freezes .After all this is the 20th century.

    1. Avatar photo Oggy says:

      Sandra’s internet out in the sticks is that slow it took in excess of 18 years to post that message.

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5473)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2525)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1780)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)

Helpful ISP Guides and Tips

Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon