Hellesdon Council in Norwich Fines CityFibre for “Shoddy” Works
The Hellesdon Parish Council, which is a village and suburb of Norwich in Norfolk (England), has fined CityFibre an unspecified amount after a local councillor complained that their efforts to rollout a new gigabit-broadband (FTTP) ISP network in the area was “shoddy” and had caused “a lot of issues“.
Deployment of the new network, which is expected to cost £50m and cover 100,000 premises in the Norwich area, started a year ago (here) and is being supported by civil engineering partner Telec Networks. But local councillor Shelagh Gurney (Conservative) complained that the contractor had caused various issues, which resulted in tarmac needing to be redone, as well as various trip hazards and problems with leftover debris.
The build itself forms part of CityFibre’s wider £5bn+ (debt and equity) investment, which aims to cover up to 8 million UK premises – across around 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). So far, the operator has already covered 1.9 million UK premises – with 1.7m Ready For Service (RFS) via a supporting ISP.
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In response, CityFibre’s local area manager, Charles Kitchin, said (Norwich Evening News): “All members of our build team are given full training before they carry out these essential works and are expected to deliver all works to high standards. On occasion, to maintain these standards, they will redo tarmacking to ensure these are consistently met.”
Deploying new infrastructure is a naturally very expensive business and will inevitably create periods of disruption for local residents, 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 lots of different operators).
Such work will frequently attract related complaints, some of which are difficult to avoid (e.g. blocked driveways and noise), although in other cases the contractors may also be failing to follow good practice. Nevertheless, operators do still have a clear responsibility to finish the work properly and, for the most part, they usually do take action when problems are identified (some areas have required remedial work).
In the long run, the ability to access affordable 1Gbps broadband speeds should make all of this disruption worthwhile and may even boost the value of local housing, as well as the economy.
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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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Maybe our council should do the same with Zzoomm, because of the build is awful and they have been a right pain in some places.
I wouldn’t make a complaint personally because I’m happy with companies installing fttp however city fibre are very messy leaving items strewn all over the place, they also seem quite slow, an area not too far away has recently had virgin installed and it was super quick and clean, even the trenches they dug are finished neater and smaller/narrower.
The problem is when they make life difficult for people, I know they have to dig up streets, but when they make it difficult for people to get around. Zzoomm was ok here by me, I was even asked if I needed help with the bike as I had to go over a trench, but I have heard some bad things about them in other parts of the city.
My neighbour had a bit of a moan about the mess of her car, it was a bit dirty and also the mess of the pavement and road after.
[admin note: removed post for trolling]
Why should a local authority have to organise getting people to clean up after a private company that can’t reinstate footways to acceptable levels even after it’s received £7.5bn of investment?
It’s called clickbait, if everyone ignores it, soon he’ll go back to wasting life on tictock and Instagram, the deadwood zone… those are the place some folk get all their info. About world affairs etc.
Can you imagine the council paying folk to travel from London and other big cities to Suffolk, who will cover that, it’s going to be a 3rd of the benefit towards train fairs.
According to https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/local-council/cityfibre-fined-for-work-in-hellesdon-near-norwich-9221770 it is the county council that has issued the fine.
you should see what Openreach did a few streets down from us. Now we have a pavement that looks like a patchwork quilt and is as smooth as a teenagers face.
Was it cityfibre or actually the build company doing the work? As they’re the ones making the mess and not cleaning up?