Court Fines BT £9K Over Permits and Substandard Roadworks in Cumbria UK UPDATE
Broadband and telecoms giant BT (Openreach) has been fined a total of £9,000 at the Barrow Magistrates Court in Cumbria (England) after Westmorland and Furness Council (WFC) brought a successful prosecution against the operator for carrying out roadworks “without permits“, while also “failing to reinstate the road adequately“.
The offences are said to have taken place during January 2025 in the parish of Seathwaite, within the Lake District National Park. The company, which we assume to actually be Openreach (only BT is named), carried out significant roadworks, installing more than 3 miles of underground duct and 20 carriageway chambers, albeit “without following correct procedures for closing the road or with appropriate permits in place“.
Just to make matters worse. The council had earlier “refused the issue of a permit” because several of them would have been needed to cover the whole works and road closures then also became a requirement, “without which the works would be considered dangerous“. The works performed also left the road in an “inadequate state and not at the required standard“.
Advertisement
Cllr Peter Thornton, WFC Cabinet Member for Highways, said:
“We don’t like having to prosecute utility companies as we recognise the important work they do. However, we do insist that this work is done to a proper standard, to strict health and safety regulations and that permits are properly applied for.
We will continue to demand the highest standards from anyone working on the public highway in Westmorland and Furness.”
The operator, which pleaded guilty, ended up being charged under Section 71 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 and Regulation 19 of the Traffic Management Permit Scheme (England) Regulations 2007, which has over the years been used to levy similar fines against various other broadband operators (recent examples here, here and here).
As well as being fined, the company was also ordered to pay the council’s costs of £5,000 and a victim surcharge of £2,000. We have asked Openreach to comment and await their response. Credits to one of our readers, Graham, for the news tip.
UPDATE 9:39am
Openreach has confirmed that they were the responsible party, not BT as stated by the council (we’re checking to see if BT was the legal representative for the case).
Advertisement
Openreach spokesperson said:
“Openreach carries out more than 300,000 jobs on roads, pavements and verges every year. Most of these finish on-time and take place without any issue. However, sometimes things don’t go to plan, and we incur a fine, which we take very seriously. Every fine is thoroughly investigated to see if it’s appropriate and to help us improve and avoid a repeat of previous problems.”
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.
« ASA UK Ban Broadband ISP Zzoomm’s Ethically Questionable Direct Mail Ad
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real persons legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Probably less problematic just to pay up the fines & treat it as an occupational hazard if the council were making it difficult. £16K was probably a small price to pay to get the job done.
And that is the problem, companies, certainly the larger ones, seems to do what they want and take the consequences for it after as it is normally cheaper. Maybe if they stick the CEOs in clink for a few months, it may make4 a diffewrence3, but I doubt it.
This is not just a BT thing, all large companies seem to think they can do what they want and with their friends in government they normally can and get away with it.
So much corruption in this country,
This is not what corruption is.
I think standards of operations of code operators and their infrastructure builder contractors since much of the planning has been removed have severely declined . The lack of obtaining necessary permits for works , permissions, consents ,following health and safety practises ,poor traffic management and poor standard of reinstatement continues to occur without much redress . Many of these companies just get fined if they are caught , if observed. If you look at the recorded breaches and think this is only the very tip of the iceberg as only 10% of works is required to be checked and most relies on residents and councils being vigilant and caring for the works happening in their communities . Whilst FFTP broadband is vital for all areas , the substandard unsafe works should be halted. Surely the telecommunications industry and its contractors should be brought to account, scrutinised and regulated more closely
No evidence quality has gone down, just lots more works than any time since the cable company builds. If there are ten times as many works even if the rate of issues has been reduced 5-fold there are still twice as many issues.
No problems with permits back then as permits didn’t exist. Planning permission only ever applied to cabinets not ducts and poles weren’t a thing for cable builds.
When doing large builds that are going to run for a while companies have been routinely paying for council inspectors. All works have to be fixed at their cost if they fail within two years. Short of endless rolling inspection cycles I’m not sure what you’re expecting local authorities to do besides rely to some extent on public reports to get things fixed more quickly.
As a general rule companies doing the works didn’t have people following contractors around. People twitched curtains but weren’t out and about looking for reasons to complain and obviously no phones filming contractors or social media to share on when cable was being built.
Mark have you got issues with Aquiss’s IP range? or have I been banned? Can’t get though on their connection
No, unless they’ve acquired something that was already a block with a low reputation. Drop me an email with your current IP and I’ll take a look:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/contact.shtml
This was a significant piece of civils work so it would have been contracted out to a sub contractor. BT will no doubt have already investigated and made arrangements for any remedies for poor practice by the contractor. BT have pleaded guilty simply because it is not worth pursuing.
I know the Lake District is picturesque but they also need good network infrastructure either for FTTP or mobile. That may require some inconvenience.
To me its a simple case of a lack of early communication with OR (or BT) if there were identified issues. This wasn’t just done in a few days and sounds more like a debate around the definitions in the NRSWA and a jobs worth.
@polish poler so therefore if you say quality and safety of work has shown no change it must have always been pretty poor then. ,from what we observed of works in Hedon .So many breaches have been reported in so many other sites in the country , so these are not isolated incidents.Whilst I’m sure there are many companies and contractors who do have good practices it’s certain there are a proportion that think rules and regulations do not apply to them. Because of the severe increase of numbers of works yes the number of these incidences will have increased . But surely as an industry these incidents should be rooted out . These repeated fines show that the industry as a whole do not take their responsibilities seriously
Joyce, how many breaches were reported in Hedon and what % of these were upheld?