North Yorkshire may lose scores of phone boxes

10:18am Friday 25th July 2008

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Should phone boxes be relegated to history, or do they still have a place in the 21st Century? CLAIRE MORLEY investigates.

YESTERDAY’S announcement that more than 150 phone boxes in York and North Yorkshire are to be removed has met with strong opposition.

Phone company BT argues that with the rise of mobile phones, payphones have been made more or less redundant.

And after a 90-day consultation period with local authorities, BT has announced the removal of ten phone boxes in York, 18 in Selby, 27 in Ryedale, 21 in Scarborough, 50 in Harrogate and 31 in Hambleton.

Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh said removing phone boxes could potentially put lives at risk if people did not have a mobile phone handy to dial 999, or there was no network coverage.

She said: “I can understand that BT is under pressure to reduce its costs, but in rural areas like North Yorkshire, getting rid of phone boxes could cause a real problem.

“Not everyone has mobile phones and even people who do have them will find they can’t always get a signal in rural and hilly areas.

“If someone needs an ambulance and their mobile phone doesn’t have signal, then they could be in serious trouble.

“I am disappointed by the decision because I hoped that BT would have listened to the needs of a rural area and provided this social service to the public.”

She said she would be writing to John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to voice her disappointment.

Meanwhile, York pensioner Keith Chapman, of Custance Walk, said he was horrified by BT’s announcement and had already written to the city’s MP Hugh Bayley.

He called for a return of police boxes, which were used for decades for members of the public to contact the local police station.

He said: “We must bring back police boxes. When these were closed they were replaced by the BT boxes and now we need some other alternative to make sure that life and death situations are covered by some service.

“The idea of taking the phones away that provide a service to many in case of an emergency is appalling.

“Hoping that everyone has access to a mobile phone is not ideal – what happens if the phone is in an area of poor reception?”

A BT spokesman said the company remained committed to providing a public payphone service, but where necessary, had rationalised its public payphone estate in order to meet demand.

She said: “There has been a review of our payphone network virtually since the turn of the millennium, following the rise in the popularity of mobile phones, which has resulted in a decline in payphone use.

“There is an Ofcom-approved process in place, which means when we want to remove a kiosk where there is not another within 400 metres, we consult with the relevant local authorities, explain what we want to do and why.

“They then agree, or come up with a genuine reason why we shouldn’t remove it, and then we won’t.

“Some kiosks are used less than once a month – some even haven’t been used at all in the last 12 months. The situation has become significantly worse in the last two years.”

But James Player, deputy chief officer of Age Concern, in York, said this did not matter because you could never know when an emergency was going to crop up and the phone boxes should be there in case.

He added: “I don’t think it’s such a big issue for the elderly because many older people have mobile phones or landlines.

“However, if their own phone is cut off due to the increasing debt or a fault, they would have to depend on a phone box or a neighbour and I wonder whether the elderly would be welcomed into a neighbour’s home to make an emergency phone call.”