Fibre optic through inside of third party property. Wayleave issues.

daveyjp

A friend of mine has his offices in a very large multi occupancy property which was fully refurbished about 20 years ago.  He has a large area of the ground floor which also houses meeting rooms, event space and a cafe.

Above his unit are 4 floors of apartments, over 100 in total.

He has a 25 year lease with 10 years left to run.  He took the unit as a bare shell and undertook a full fit out with permission from the landlord.  This included full electrical, fire alarm, security alarm and data cabling all contained within a tray system suspended from the ceiling.

A few weeks ago unbeknown to him a broadband provider acting in behalf of the property owner visited and started looking at the cabling into his unit and the cable trays. He then received notification that the company were to install a fibreoptic cable in his trays to procide FTTP to the apartments and they have a right to do this.  He suspect they have chosen this route as there is a convenient duct box in the pavement adjacent to his unit (his data cable comes from it), which the company can use to get their cable inside, rather than lay a new duct to the main building dry riser in a bin store which is about 50m away.

His issue is they are his trays and he has potential liability for others cables, not a liability he wants to take on.  There have been a few leaks from the flats and he has had to replace cabling in the past due to damage.  The fibre optic will also exit through his wall into the dry riser.

If there was a legal right wouldn't they have sent a wayleave agreement with full details of these rights? 

Anyone have any insights into what the legal position actually is on using a third party property to route a cable not serving that property?

iniltous

TBH , probably something that would need a professional opinion, any layman offering an opinion would be nothing more than that , a layman’s opinion… presumably refusing access to the company wanting to provide this cabling is likely to result in them walking away , and then potentially further communications from the building owner / freeholder, where refusal to allow access may result in them using another ( more expensive for them ) route into the building riser.

I suspect it will be somewhat complicated, the freeholder may well have access rights to the area , but rights to use equipment they haven’t supplied is much less clear ( and unlikely ) if your friend hadn’t provided it for their own use , obviously it wouldn’t be available for use by the freeholder or the FTTP provider they have presumably invited onto site .

Seeking the advice of a property lawyer seems the way forward.