Frustration in Swindon UK as CityFibre Keep Blocking Driveways

CityFibre’s £40m investment to deploy a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the Wiltshire town of Swindon, which began in late 2020 (here), has in recent weeks generated a few complaints after contractors blocked some residents inside their homes – often without prior notice.

Broadband users in parts of the Stratton, Pinehurst and Moredon areas recently became some of the first in Swindon to gain access to the new network, which is being delivered by civil engineering firm Volker Smart Technologies and is currently due to be “substantially completed” by 2024.

The rollout forms part of the operator’s wider £4bn project, which has already covered 1 million UK premises with FTTP and aims to have 8 million “substantially completed” – across 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). This will also cover a total of around 800,000 businesses, 400,000 public sector sites and 250,000 5G access points.

All of this is good news, unless you’re one of a number of angry locals in Swindon who has had their house and driveway blocked by the digging of a trench, which has been documented by the Swindon Advertiser here and here (see for pictures as our picture is from a different area). As a result, anybody who wants to get into or out of their house often has to interrupt the work and then wait awhile for everything to be moved and opened up.

The articles both accuse CityFibre’s contractors of declining to identify who they worked for (i.e. no emblems, no notices and no corporate identity on their vans), while also using questionable health and safety measures (e.g. school kids walking onto the road to avoid the works) and of having failed to notify residents about it all beforehand.

The council reportedly states that the contractor’s permit to work is only authorised if they give locals 7 working days’ notice of the start date etc.

Neil Madle, CityFibre’s City Manager for Swindon, said:

“We’re sorry to learn about this issue as we always endeavour to minimise disruption and complete all works as quickly as possible…

We can assure residents that we do everything in our power to inform the community well ahead of work starting, which includes direct mail, press and speaking directly to individuals.

We are grateful for the continued support we’ve received from the local community and ask that they continue to bear with us while we work to future-proof Swindon’s digital infrastructure.”

In most cases, it’s not so much an issue of the work itself being disruptive, but rather that the residents weren’t given prior notice and so couldn’t move their cars or make alternative arrangements ahead of time. The fact that this has happened on several occasions suggests that CityFibre’s attempts to notify residents have not always been effective. In fairness, it can be easy to miss such leaflets, as most of us are now hardwired to automatically bin anything that looks even remotely spammy.

Deploying new infrastructure will inevitably create periods of disruption for residents in the same area, which is often true no matter who is doing the noisy civil engineering side of things. Over the years we’ve seen similar gripes being levelled against most of the main operators, and some smaller players too.

Such work will often end up attracting complaints, some of which are difficult to avoid (e.g. blocked driveways and noise), although in other cases the contractors may be failing to follow good practice. However, in the long run, the ability to access affordable gigabit broadband speeds should make all of this disruption worthwhile and may even boost the value of local housing, as well as the economy.

Nevertheless, operators do still have a clear responsibility to conduct the work properly and, for the most part, they do take action when problems are identified.