Moving a BT cable - expensive?!

Bethan1

Hello.. wondering if anyone out there has any experience of having an overhead BT cable moved?

We’re in the process of buying a plot of land to build on. There is a BT cable running over the plot from a pole in one neighbours garden, to a pole in the garden of our other neighbour.

From what we had read, if there is no wayleave agreement on the poles then you can request the wires/poles to be moved free of charge. However, the more we read up on this it sounds as if it can be a very expensive job to get things moved if there is no wayleave. The only information we can find is from forums which are quite dated, so I’m not sure if things have changed in the last few years.

I’ve tried making enquiries with Openreach about where we would stand but as we’re not officially the owners yet, they won’t give me any information.

We’ve also read that the whole process of Openreach coming out to do the work is very lengthy, which could cause delays with our build.

Our problem at the moment is that if this is going to cost a huge amount (we’ve read some stories where it’s cost up to £20k) then it’s a chunk of our budget gone before we’ve even started building.

I’d welcome any advice/information from anyone with experience of this.

Thanks in advance!

martindow

Is a thin wire running across the plot a real problem? Have a look around and you will probably see that many houses have phone wires crossing other people's gardens.



You are going to need a wire for your phone running to your new house and from the sound of it this will come from one of these poles and will cross their garden.

Carrot007

Assuming the cable is right in the way of where you want to build, as otherwise why move it?


Then the plot should be reduced by an appropriate ammount. Of course maybe the current owner already tried and worked out how much of a pain it would be and just wants to pass it on.

Browntoa

It's not unknown for phone lines to route to another house via the soffit board/wall of another property. Discuss this option with openreach. It may take the form of a new wayleave giving access at all times.

I'm not sure if it's possible to get your builder to site a pole at the edge of your boundary if openreach allowed that .

davidmcn

Bethan1 wrote: »

I’ve tried making enquiries with Openreach about where we would stand but as we’re not officially the owners yet, they won’t give me any information.

So what discussions have you had with the current owners about it so far?

EachPenny

Browntoa wrote: »

I'm not sure if it's possible to get your builder to site a pole at the edge of your boundary if openreach allowed that .

Openreach would insist on doing all the work themselves. They will 'own' the pole going forward into the future and be liable if it falls over. They won't want to take on a pole installed by someone else, or at least not without them having an inspector on site supervising it being installed. The cost of this would exceed the cost of getting Openreach to do the whole job.

Unless the proposed house is particularly high and the wire is exactly where the highest parts of the house will be, then the most likely solution might be for Openreach to increase the tension on the wire so it doesn't sag so much. Back in the day they installed the wires with 'plenty of slack', especially if they were crossing gardens rather than roads. As this is a pole to pole link it could potentially be tensioned up more without risk of pulling the bargeboard off someone's house.

Davesnave

Bethan1 wrote: »

From what we had read, if there is no wayleave agreement on the poles then you can request the wires/poles to be moved free of charge.



However, the more we read up on this it sounds as if it can be a very expensive job to get things moved if there is no wayleave.

These two statements seem to be at odds with each other!

I managed to get a pole with no wayleave moved for free, but it was a highly unusual situation where the pole was not supposed to be on my land at all. Even then, it took months of wrangling to get Openreach to sort things out equitably, although I suspec they would be quicker in a situation with a monetary incentive.

With regard to cost, it took 6 men in 3 vehicles the best part of a day to relocate one pole, so the figure must in the thousands rather than the hundreds.

Owain_Moneysaver

A pole-to-pole cable may be serving (indirectly) a dozen or more properties; it may even, these days in some areas, be overhead fibre. All will be more expensive to relocate than a single pair serving one customer.

If both the neighbours are willing it may be easier to trench between the poles, install duct (to Openreach's spec), and Openreach reconnect the two poles by underground cable. If you're building you'll have diggers in for the foundations.

Note that wayleaves for poles in the garden are different from wayleaves for flying wires over the garden. BT might not need permission to fly wires over, so any work will be chargeable to you.