"NO! to poles in our close

NO, WE DO NOT WANT POLES IN OUR CLOSE

PART 1

This was the first time in my life that I have ever, ever organised any sort of direct action in the hope of hoping to change something being dumped by a large corporate in our quiet close.

In late October 2025 there were four notices placed around our residential close here in Ringwood in southern England.

They looked fairly innocuous. A4 sized sheets of paper with black type on them and laminated against the winter elements. Almost like those posters distressed pet owners put up around their neighbourhoods when their beloved feline or canine has gone walkabout. A couple of people I spoke to in the close thought they were that sort of thing and ignored them.

As harmless as they looked the posters were announcing changes that if implemented would affect the close forever.

They were put up by Openreach which is a subsidiary of British Telecom (BT). Openreach is the company that maintains the telephone cables, the ducting or telegraph poles they run along, those green cabinets seen dotted about on street corners and exchanges that form the infrastructure for telephone and digital communications across the UK.

Statutory Background

What those notices were informing the residents of was a proposal to erect four telegraph poles to be interlaced with cabling carrying fibre optic cabling to the houses in the close. They gave notice within the auspices of the “Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 2016 (amended) (England) and the “Electronics Communications Code (conditions and restrictions) Regulations 2003 (as amended).

The man on the Clapham omnibus

To the “…ordinary reasonable man…the man on the Clapham omnibus” as mentioned by Lord Justice Greer in 1932. Most of us in the close are ordinary reasonable people and this proposal felt like an invasion of our street to the detriment of its appearance which thus far has remained clear of ugly street furniture apart from some lamp posts and grit boxes for when the road gets icy.

One telegraph pole is proposed to be erected on the verge directly outside our immediate neighbour’s house at the apex where their driveway joins the road. Not only will the proposed pole be an eyesore, but it will also make it difficult to use their driveway and will have an effect on the value of their house.

The neighbourhood WhatsApp group carried several messages regarding the poles. Overall, the majority were against the poles. Those who were accepting of the poles expressed that their installation was inevitable and there was no point in raising any objections. Some quoted directly from the Openreach replies to the objections using words such as “costly”, “disruptive” and threw in “environmentally damaging”. Not quite sure how underground cabling can be environmentally damaging unless they belong to the “Royal Society to Protect Earthworms”.

Objections were lodged with Openreach and each person who did so received the same bland reply referring to engineering surveys, cost and minimising disruption.

This is when I organised a petition. This meant knocking on doors and this was the first time I had ever done it in the name of a community cause.

I knew which address to avoid as having seen the contributions from them on the WhatsApp group I knew asking for their signature on a petition would be a complete waste of time and energy. The doors I did knock on and get an answer from were genuinely supportive and willingly added their names to the list of objectors.

Maybe this political activism isn’t such a bad gig after all.

That was until the last house I called on.