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Anger After CityFibre Builds UK Broadband Cabinet on Private Garden

Thursday, Jan 23rd, 2025 (12:01 am) - Score 23,000
CityFibre-Cabinet-in-Private-Essex-Garden-by-Nadia-Stillwell-with-permission-220125

CityFibre has been criticised by a homeowner in Southend-on-Sea (Essex, England) after the operator accidentally built one of their new full fibre broadband ISP street cabinets, without permission, on a private garden. But then, after attempting to rectify their mistake, “left the garden in ruins – an unsafe and hazardous mess“.

Just to recap. The operator, which has already extended their FTTP network to cover 4 million premises across the United Kingdom, officially announced the completion of their £51m project to deploy full fibre lines across the city of Southend-on-Sea (c. 70,000 premises) in December 2023 (here). Since then, they have been busy trying to reach further areas, including “new build properties, those on private or unadopted roads and business parks.”

NOTE: Network operators are usually allowed to install new street cabinets under Permitted Development (PD) rights, often with only minimal prior notification (Code of Practice). But private property is different and requires that permission be granted first.

One such area of expansion appears to have occurred along Concorde Road, but all didn’t go quite according to plan after CityFibre’s engineers ended up plonking a new street cabinet on a private garden. Such mistakes are very rare and usually get identified before any civil engineering work takes place by third-party contractors, but they do sometimes happen.

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However, in this case, one of the occupants of the home happened to be a specialist solicitor in dispute resolution and employment, Nadia Stillwell, who also has a strong online profile (Linkedin).

Nadia Stillwell said:

“Imagine coming home from work, looking forward to relaxing, only to find your front garden—a space you’ve cared for and enjoyed—completely destroyed. A massive 2-metre green box has been installed without your knowledge or consent. The grass? Gone. In its place, a muddy, uneven pit of chaos with a sprinkling of grass seed in freezing cold weather.

That’s exactly what happened to us in December 2024. CityFibre entered our property without notice, dug up the front garden, and installed a cabinet that didn’t belong there. They later admitted their mistake as it is private land (someone didn’t read the land registry documents), removed the cabinet after pressure from the council, but left the garden in ruins—an unsafe and hazardous mess. This is a snippet of the wrong doings!

For the past six weeks, I’ve tried to get CityFibre to take responsibility. I’ve followed up repeatedly, and yet, they’ve ignored every single communication. The damage to the property is extensive and expensive and there’s no sign of accountability from their side.

As a lawyer, I’m no stranger to fighting for justice—but as a person experiencing this firsthand, I truly understand the frustration, stress, and sense of powerlessness my clients feel when faced with similar challenges.”

In fairness, on roads like this it can sometimes be difficult to identify where the public verge/pavement ends and the private property begins (see image below), which may be a contributing factor in how the cabinet ended up in the wrong location. Nevertheless, both CityFibre and the Council did later acknowledge that it was on private land, hence the decision to move it.

CityFibre-Removed-Cabinet-in-Private-Essex-Garden-by-Nadia-Stillwell-with-permission-220125

The issue that Nadia now has is with CityFibre’s seemingly ineffective remedy to the damage they left behind and their lack of communication. One of the operator’s agents did in fact respond to her post on Tuesday and stated that they were now “liaising with the property owner on this case“, which prompted the primary property owner, Luke Stillwell, to say “there has been no communication after over a month!“. Oops.

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ISPreview has since raised the issue with CityFibre and was given the following statement.

A CityFibre spokesperson told ISPreview:

“One of our teams mistakenly installed a roadside cabinet on private land on 18th December. We have removed the cabinet, apologised to Mr and Mrs Stillwell, and are working with them to restore the lawn to its original condition.”

Nadia has now confirmed that CityFibre have finally responded to their hails after a long period of silence, but it remains to be seen whether a satisfactory resolution can be reached. Mistakes happen, but it’s often in how you remedy those that really matters, and in this case it appears as if CityFibre still has some work to do.

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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, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
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36 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo Lee says:

    I would not of asked to remove it if f they offered me full 1.6gb fibre for free for life would have asked for that straight away . lol

    1. Avatar photo htmm says:

      This would be my thinking, too (if otherwise I had enough garden space).
      Although I would suggest the wording of “CityFibre to provide their fastest package available with all the optional extras turned on, free of charge”

    2. Avatar photo Ayaya says:

      “not have” in English not “not of”

    3. Avatar photo CJ says:

      Cityfibre don’t offer actual broadband though lol so highly unlikely unless they sweet talked an ISP

  2. Avatar photo Industry Insider2 says:

    Surely waiting until the cabinet went live and had
    customers connected before asking for a £25k wayleave payment for the trespass would be smarter..

  3. Avatar photo A Stevens says:

    Hilarious muppetry, from them or a contractor – and yet again, a comms company that cannot communicate. Why are they always so terrible at this stuff?

    1. Avatar photo No Name says:

      A lot of it is the hope that if you ignore someone for long enough they will just go away.

    2. Avatar photo Trix says:

      Actually has nothing to do with the Altnet 90% of the time.
      It actually comes down to the building company providing accurate maps to land registry, which most of the time they don’t, or it comes down to land registry who often plot the boundaries in the wrong place.
      The altnet would have applied for a permit which would have been reviewed and granted by the local highway authority, but if they are working from inaccurate maps, they can’t really be blamed for the issue.

      Don’t get me wrong, there are times when the Altnet puts something somewhere they shouldn’t, but it’s never done maliciously. It’s what makes me laugh when people accuse Altnets of things thinking they like throwing away money.

  4. Avatar photo john says:

    I mean CityFibre should be making good but got to laugh at the property owners’ representation of their front garden. You’d think CityFibre had destroyed a nice flower garden or something. It’s a bit of barely maintained grass that is full of weeds.

    1. Avatar photo Ben says:

      I’d take issue with her ‘cared for and enjoyed’ statement. The photo shows the street address and town, so it doesn’t take much of a sleuth to look it up on Google Maps. From the pictures, it looks exactly the same as all the other houses on that estate. IE. the landscaping was put in place by the original builders. At best maybe they mowed the lawn.

      But I would agree on a point-of-principle that CityFibre could put a bit of turf down to cover it up.

  5. Avatar photo Diver Fred says:

    What is City Fibres design philosophy/topography? In the village where I live we have had BT/OR FTTP for at least 10 years and they have been migrating people to FTTP/DV operation as and when with intention of removing the cabinet once the ‘copper’ network is no longer used. All the fibre is underground except where it it goes up poles.
    Along comes City Fibre and we now have not one cabinet but 3 in one road of 1/2Km long and presently five in the village at least. we have been told that more ‘may’ appear. In my home village where GogaClear arrived a couple of years ago there is one Grey cabinet suppling 3 villages with everything else underground except for the fibre ‘cable’ up poles. I think they really need to tidy their act up.

    1. Avatar photo Joyce Whittle says:

      This is exactly what campaigners against the overbuild of infrastructure have been trying to fight all along . It is because of poor government legislation ,permitted development for telecommunications installations that this overbuild of infrastructure has been allowed,blighting many urban communities across the UK . Sharing of infrastructure should be the default , any considered addition to infrastructure should be subject to proper planning and consideration by those it affects . If this happened then many of these errors in placement would be avoided

    2. Avatar photo RSW says:

      This is why it should be installed the same as the other utilities with a single supply from a local exchange or street cab to each property. Then the end users choose who they get a service from and any physical changes are done at the head end not the property.

    3. Avatar photo Hull says:

      Try again but in English, Joyce. No wonder your campaign failed to stop all the poles in East Yorkshire.

  6. Avatar photo Big Dave says:

    Have to have a little bit of sympathy for CityFibre here, there appears to be an Openreach manhole & a pole for a street sign on the same piece of ground so they could easily been forgiven for thinking this was public ground. As Lee says, give me free broadband for life & I would have probably let it go.

    1. Avatar photo Artie Fish says:

      While they have duct sharing agreements, they should still have permission from the property owner.

    2. Avatar photo Scott says:

      @Artie Fish I think Big Dave was suggesting this looks more like a service strip.

  7. Avatar photo Ad47uk says:

    ” Mistakes happen, but it’s often in how you remedy those that really matters,”

    Yep,

  8. Avatar photo Artie Fish says:

    They have form for the “ask for forgiveness” approach to building. Wayleaves are only a hypothesis with them

  9. Avatar photo Ian Williams says:

    Gigacrap did exactly the same to one of my neighbours, except they refused to remove it, then to add insult to injury, also refused to connect that neighbour saying their address wasn’t eligible!

  10. Avatar photo Duncan McClymont says:

    People can stop moaning and send the install teams our way please
    Happily give up a small bit of garden for our village to have decent connections

    1. Avatar photo Y says:

      That is nice but there’s a difference between agreeing to it being placed on your land, and unexpectedly finding it in your garden

  11. Avatar photo Nicknack says:

    2-metre green box? Granted, all of this should not have happened in the first place. However if the complainant cannot be bothered to truthfully take to a tape measure and instead over exaggerate an assumption then I simply have no faith nor trust in their supposed profession.

  12. Avatar photo Bob-de-Builder says:

    “ Imagine coming home from work, looking forward to relaxing”!

    I simply cannot imagine that while the householder was away for one day, the contractors arrived, dug & installed a cabinet without ANY prior signs that something was going to happen. Usually, markings are painted, and site visits. To believe that a team arrived with ‘pop up’ infrastructure isn’t believable.

  13. Avatar photo Webber says:

    Did she try blaming the existing weeds on CityFibre?? seems she is working towards a large compensation payment. Thats what solicitors do.

    1. Avatar photo UndercoverBrother says:

      Exacty & they somehow didnt noticed someone on their property/garden digging & installing a comms cabinet & cabling etc? if they were away, no CCTV ?

  14. Avatar photo Trix says:

    This is honestly laughable, so this person is claiming a prolonged period of no contact? How is that even possible? If the box was installed on the 18th of December and it is only the 23rd of January now, taking into account maybe a week from the box being removed to this article going up, that’s just over 3 weeks.
    But you also need to consider that there was a Christmas and New Year break in between!

    And the claim that the lawn is somehow destroyed and dangerous??? First off it’s the front of the house and it’s right next to the road, not exactly “prime real-estate”, secondly, the lawn is visibly yellowed in spots nowhere near the works site and they wouldn’t have been there long enough to cause that damage, then looking at their “perfect lawn” you can see it’s also covered in weeds.

    At the very most, this is an annoyance, but of course this person is a lawyer, so we know they know how to milk a situation for all it’s worth.

    1. Avatar photo MikeP says:

      Yeah, but we’re taking LinkedIn here, which is increasingly making Facebook, and even Twitter, seem like sane places.
      Noe the Post Office Inquiry sessions have finished, I visit it much less often.

    2. Avatar photo Sam says:

      LinkedIn out of the non communist platforms is indeed a platform for loonies. People post the most banal of things just to pretend they are doing anything relevant. Hilarious reading up on this “CMO super master of branding” calling Jaguars rebranding as “genius”

      Are there no legal grounds for this woman to sue for property damage?

  15. Avatar photo Steven says:

    The house builders of that development also appear to have forgotten to build footpaths.
    Be interesting to see where the boundary is for that property on the corner of Concorde Rd/Cole Ave/Poole Way.

    On the flipside, where house builders have designed in footpath space but then later only grassed it (cost of tarmac? green space clause?) with two clear kerbstone demarcations… then the new property owner moves in and decides to monoblock all the way up to the road stealing the footpath – I’ve seen a few chambers be completely blocked over (and not with the inlay lid either!).

  16. Avatar photo Me says:

    You would have thought it was obvious they were putting it in someone’s garden, therefore perhaps checked with the owner before digging it all up? But no, apparently not.

    1. Avatar photo MikeP says:

      If it says “do this” on the worksheet, that’s what gets done, barring H&S issues (like putting a pole in close proximity to an HV or EHV line. Oh, hang on).
      If that wasn’t how it worked, the whole construction industry would grind to a halt.

  17. Avatar photo Nick Roberts says:

    A distinct lack of concord ?

  18. Avatar photo SicOf says:

    “accidentally built” haha , I doubt it, an error / failure yes, accident? No.
    Accidents are things that happen that are out of your control, acts of god etc. not bad, poor delinquent practice.

    Act in haste and repent.. etc. Maybe gb’s motto. Definately isn’t do it right first time.

    With the great revalation of digital ‘improvement’ replacement over the previous.. we’d acctually be having less above ground obstacles, eyesores etc. and removing options for infrastructure damage and risks, and not making more?

  19. Avatar photo ex-techie says:

    Fences are a thing.
    I’d never have an open garden to the world at the front of my property, even on a new estate. That’d clearly define a boundary and the contractor probably wouldn’t have installed it there because of the clearly defined boundary either.

  20. Avatar photo LLM says:

    Hmm, is that a lampost on their property?

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