Full Fibre Builder Truespeed Fined £16k for Safety Failings in Somerset UK UPDATE
Fibre optic builder and rural ISP Truespeed, which is deploying a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to homes in the South West of England, has been fined £16,000 by Taunton Magistrates Court after it was found to have breached Section 60 and 65 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991.
The operator, which holds an “ambitious” overall target of reaching 500,000 properties by the end of 2026 and has already done 75,000 premises (mostly in Devon, Wiltshire and Somerset), is currently being funded by a total investment of £175m from Aviva (£134m of which has already been committed to physical builds).
According to the Bath & North East Council (BNES), the latest issue centred on street works that occurred in the village of Peasedown St John during late 2022. The local authority is understood to have inspected the operator’s work to lay new optical fibre cables, only to find both an “open excavation with numerous safety failings“.
Advertisement
The operator itself did not attend the hearing and was fined £16,000 by the court for the street works that were left unsafe. On top of that, they were also ordered to pay £5,793 to cover BNES Council’s costs, as well as a £2,000 victim surcharge.
Councillor Manda Rigby, Cabinet Member for Transport, said:
“Our Inspector found the state of the site left by Truespeed unsafe and unacceptable. We want to be clear that we take all breaches like this very seriously indeed and if necessary, won’t hesitate to prosecute companies that put our residents at risk.
We are pleased with the court’s judgement, which serves as a reminder to all utility companies operating in our district that we will hold them accountable for the standard of their work on our highways.”
Truespeed are by no means the first digital infrastructure builder to be fined for poor street works, and they certainly won’t be the last. But often what counts the most is how an operator responds when alerted to such issues, although the council’s notice makes no mention of that.
UPDATE 5pm
We’ve got a comment back from Truespeed on this.
Advertisement
Simon Wall, Truespeed Chief Network Delivery Officer, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“Truespeed accepts B&NES’s decision and will not be contesting the outcome. Truespeed can confirm it was an isolated occurrence, involving a single road crew working for a contractor on behalf of Truespeed. This specific crew did not adhere to the mandatory compliance policies in place and are no longer associated with the contractor. The contractor has since been placed on a performance improvement programme and weekend supervision has been strengthened.”
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.
« Major UK Broadband and Mobile Providers Commit to Recruit More Women
Top Fastest UK Mobile and Home Broadband ISPs for H1 2023 »
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (6024)
- BT (3638)
- Politics (2720)
- Business (2439)
- Openreach (2405)
- Building Digital UK (2330)
- Mobile Broadband (2143)
- FTTC (2083)
- Statistics (1899)
- 4G (1813)
- Virgin Media (1762)
- Ofcom Regulation (1582)
- Fibre Optic (1467)
- Wireless Internet (1462)
- 5G (1404)
As they didn’t turn up to the hearing and they were prosecuted under section 60 which is failure to co-operate, I expect the council didn’t have much response to mention.
Sounds like an open and shut case, and the costs of sending a lawyer to apologise and plead for mitigation clearly weren’t deemed worth it.
Looking at other similar prosecutions for s60 and s65 involving other companies, it seems Truespeed didn’t get hit unduly for making that call.
From what I’ve seen of these altnet contractors I’m not in the least bit surprised. Bunch of cowboys. I certainly wouldn’t want them on my property.
I’d welcome them with open arms.
I agree Dave , the state of their civil engineering is just beyond me . The depth at which they are laying these cables is so shallow as soon as the pavement gets resurfaced people are going to lose their connection .
Cowboys is absolutely the right word to describe them
Got these cowboys starting work from 5th July in my part of Bath & I will not be having them on my property,hopefully City Fibre will be a better choice when they start here soon.
@Andrew – they won’t be on your property, they will be digging roads and pavements until you sign up.
Not even a slap on the wrist for them, they have bigger fish to fry. The only penalty that would be an actual penalty would be to reject permits for future builds.
Chances are the fine will be passed back to the contractor doing the works, they have already indicated the offending crew was released due to not following mandatory guidelines they had in place.
It’s not Truespeed at fault per se, but the contractor.
If we penalised companies for contractors breaking the terms to keep the company in compliance in this manner, we’d still be on copper lines with carriages. Trains wouldn’t run, cars would have never got to the ubiquity they are today.
Must be competing with Jurassic for worst altnet.
Does look like it