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Who Regulates Openreach?

Davesnave
Posts: 34,741 Forumite


in Phones & TV
Some time ago, I posted a thread here asking how I could make contact with Openreach, who don't seem to be terribly keen to be contacted by ordinary people, like me.
I began writing to one of their email addresses in early November 2012, but received no reply until this year, when someone who seemed to be the Saturday boy, rang us and made a few suggestions, none of which were any good. Surprise, surprise, he withheld the number he rang from.
Several posters here tried to be helpful, but no telephone numbers were forthcoming. Eventually, buried deep in the Openreach web site, I found the most appropriate address to which I could write. The details are unimportant, but my enquiry concerned a telegraph pole, not any matter relating directly to a telephone service.
All well and good, but here we are two months later, and despite a reminder, there has not been so much as an acknowledgement of my letter. I might as well have written to Kin Jong-un for all the good it seems to have done me. :mad:
As you may have discerned by now, this is a very controlled rant. It just seems incredible that a utility company can be so sure of itself that it consistently ignores correspondence sent to the addresses it posts. Is it really totally unregulated? The Ombudsman service specifically excludes matters relating to poles, so I have had a look at Ofcom, but their site doesn't seem to cover the physical business of sticking poles in the ground.
I have a couple of friends who are all for taking direct action in this matter; one has a chain saw and the other a large digger. Although they are well-known for their exploits with these tools, I think that unleashing them would only end badly for me, so I am still hopeful of having a rational discussion with Openreach first.
Can anyone assist?
I began writing to one of their email addresses in early November 2012, but received no reply until this year, when someone who seemed to be the Saturday boy, rang us and made a few suggestions, none of which were any good. Surprise, surprise, he withheld the number he rang from.
Several posters here tried to be helpful, but no telephone numbers were forthcoming. Eventually, buried deep in the Openreach web site, I found the most appropriate address to which I could write. The details are unimportant, but my enquiry concerned a telegraph pole, not any matter relating directly to a telephone service.
All well and good, but here we are two months later, and despite a reminder, there has not been so much as an acknowledgement of my letter. I might as well have written to Kin Jong-un for all the good it seems to have done me. :mad:
As you may have discerned by now, this is a very controlled rant. It just seems incredible that a utility company can be so sure of itself that it consistently ignores correspondence sent to the addresses it posts. Is it really totally unregulated? The Ombudsman service specifically excludes matters relating to poles, so I have had a look at Ofcom, but their site doesn't seem to cover the physical business of sticking poles in the ground.
I have a couple of friends who are all for taking direct action in this matter; one has a chain saw and the other a large digger. Although they are well-known for their exploits with these tools, I think that unleashing them would only end badly for me, so I am still hopeful of having a rational discussion with Openreach first.
Can anyone assist?

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Comments
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Is it the Wayleave department you need to contact?
That page came up first on entering bt wayleave into Google.0 -
You can phone them on 0800 023 20230
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Is it the Wayleave department you need to contact?
That page came up first on entering bt wayleave into Google.
Thanks, but no. That page is fine of you want Openreach to pay you some money for having a pole on your land.
However, it doesn't help those of us who don't want a pole, or a pole in the position it's in now, especially when the land owner was not consulted about its positioning in the first place.0 -
colin79666 wrote: »You can phone them on 0800 023 2023
Thanks. I have a very similar number, but I will try this tomorrow.
My number doesn't get me through to Pole Objections, which is the dept I want to obtain a response from, based in York.0 -
What makes you think you wouldn't get a response from The North Korean President?
They (OR) have no public presence, as they are accountable only to their shareholders. Their activities are quite wide-ranging and due to their universal obligation requirement, their planning and implementation do not require seeking permissions to implement infrastructure on public land and route wayleaves. It has been this way since the days of the GPO - so there's nothing new with regard to disliking were a pole is to be sited or a distribution box. This is placed with the needs of of the infrastructure plan, not the aesthetics of whether residents personally like it.
As to the 'direct action' threat - I do hope see idiots will find their own services disrupted, and I'm aware of those in areas targeting vandalism like this being immediately grassed to the police - and te ours are pretty ruthless too.
If representations need to be made, the route with the fastest success rate is via BT themselves - a letter to BTHQ in Newgate St London may achieve a direct response.0 -
If representations need to be made, the route with the fastest success rate is via BT themselves - a letter to BTHQ in Newgate St London may achieve a direct response.
Thanks,that's really useful, I hope.
As to the rest of your diatribe, it seems to be saying, as I suspected, that there is no one regulating the activities of Openreach. So, even though they use my land in the same way as Western Power, they choose to be a damn sight less accessible to me. Lessons to be learned, perhaps.
I haven't threatened anyone with direct action; far from it. I'd like to have a rational discussion about this pole and the rather odd circumstances in which it arrived here. Then, we might find out a few things, like why it is in a precarious position, and why the cable to it must pass through a drainage culvert, which now cannot be cleared. I wouldn't need to engage in 'vandalism' to cut off he only person that it serves, just clear a waterway.
This has nothing to do with aesthetics; it's about the way public utilities behave. I can't even see the thing from my house.0 -
Perhaps a polite call to BT Group head office, 020 7356 5000, during office hours explaining the issue and asking which department might be best.0
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Perhaps a polite call to BT Group head office, 020 7356 5000, during office hours explaining the issue and asking which department might be best.
Thanks. If they could put me in touch with Pole Objections in York, that would be great. I'll tell you how I get on.
My original gripe remains; that they give you email & postal addresses to write to, which simply fail to deliver. Western Power Distribution and South West Water don't behave like this: their responses are pretty much immediate.0 -
On the 8th April we lost our telephone and Internet line , bt said would be up and running by 12th and would call to tell us, no call we called them on a mobile then would be up by the Monday 15th and again nothing, finally got some one to call me would be done by the 18th and I will call you and yes once again I had to call them now I been told to call tomorrow Tuesday for an update because in there words they too busy to advise me what's happening and as for compensation I don't have to pay while its been down, surely we are owed something for the calls etc and the fact we are using mobile phones, and my daughter is having to use library computers to do her homework , is it me or are BT no helpful0
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Mother_on_a_mission wrote: »is it me or are BT no helpful
Mother on a mission, you need to start your own thread on this so it will be seen by those who can advise.
Some people may have seen this thread and won't come back to it!0
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