A motion has been submitted by Cllr Mike Morris for the next full council meeting being held next Thursday April 18th at Southport Town Hall.

Southport having a unique Victorian seaside townscape has been largely free of any
overhead cables or above ground apparatus since the inception of Southport Corporation in 1867 except for the electrical tramways in 1900. Since the removal of
the overhead wires for the tramways, Southport has enjoyed a visual amenity on its
streets and townscape by having very few telegraph poles and overhead cables
which would normally create a ‘spiders web’ spoiling the visual amenity of its streets
for her residents. At present, most of Southport copper telephone infrastructure is
buried ‘direct in ground’ and only very few streets have their telephone lines in
ducting.

Network operators such as Openreach are exempt from requiring planning approval
under ‘Permitted Development’ and are only required to inform the local authority
one calendar month before requesting permits. The only consultation with residents
and public is in the form of a paper notice pinned or taped to trees or lamposts in the
vicinity of a new pole, often poorly placed so that it will not be read i.e. facing the
road rather than pavement 28 days before permits are sought. There is no telephone
number to call with objections neither an email address, only a postal address.

Consultation then takes place with the ‘objectors’ whereby Openreach listen to all
objections only to end the ‘consultation’ with the fact that they will still erect poles
where they are not wanted. When asked why they do not carry out area
consultations in church halls etc, they state that they would receive too many
objections!

Openreach started the roll out of FTTP from the Churchtown exchange using
telegraph poles in February of this year. Residents of those roads which opposed the
erection of poles, spoiling the visual amenities of their streets and possibly reducing
property prices protested peacefully to raise their collective objections to the roll out
by Openreach.

The Minister of State for Data and Digital Infrastructure Hon Julia Lopez MP wrote to
Openreach and other fixed line operators on 15 March 2024 and stated.
‘ New telegraph poles should only be in cases where installing lines underground is
not reasonably practicable, and only after ensuring that appropriate community
engagement has taken place and that the siting of new infrastructure will not cause
obstructions to traffic or unduly impact the visible amenity of the local area’’

This Council therefore resolves to:-

1. Urge Openreach to reconsider their decision to erect telegraph poles instead
of ducting due to cost to preserve Southport’s townscape and visible amenity.

2. Contact Openreach and insist that the spirit of the Ministers letter of the 14th March 2024 is adhered to in regard to meaningful consultation with residents,
and pause the roll out in Southport until the existing ‘cabinet and siting and pole siting Code of Practice of 2016 has been revised.

3. Support residents if the majority of the road or street do not want poles
erected and write to OpenReach asking for a pause to the installation and call for a public meeting with those residents to establish an amicable resolution.

4. If the Council considers that any operator has breached health and safety
conditions attached to any permit or is using unsafe working practices this will be raised with the operator immediately in the most robust terms and the Council will be mindful of this when granting any further permits and / or when
considering whether any permits should be suspended.