Firm's first NI phone box refused: Council hangs up on bid to build third-party booth
A third-party phone box firm is taking its first attempt to reach Northern Ireland to high-level planning authorities, arguing an Ulster council got crossed lines when it turned down a new booth.
London-based New World Payphones Ltd wanted to build its first call box in the province in Ballymena, but was refused permission to build by town council planners who said the firm hadn’t proved there was any need for it.
Feeling that call amounted to a wrong number, the company is now taking its bid to the provincewide Planning Appeals Commission.
Documents submitted to Mid and East Antrim Council by New World state that it runs a network of around 1,500 telephone kiosks around the UK, but doesn’t yet have any in Northern Ireland and is looking to move into the area.
The firm argues that despite the ubiquity of mobile phones causing a sharp decline in demand for public call boxes, there is still “an ongoing user need” for them on streets around the country.
New World states: “Kiosks are recognised to continue to deliver an important service particularly to those without access to mobile telephony, to vulnerable people whom the market might not otherwise serve, or where mobile coverage is incomplete.
“Notably, the ability to call crisis lines and helplines from a public telephone kiosk is recognised as particularly important given that a kiosk provides an untraceable option to people uncomfortable making such calls from a landline or mobile device.”
A spot near the junction of North Road and Prospect Place in the south-west of Ballymena was picked, said the firm, as its nearest existing phone boxes are around 250m away, aging and in such poor condition that people would be unlikely to use them.
The kiosk would include a defibrillator, which the firm suggested would be a benefit in medical emergencies; New World also argued that mobile phone coverage is “variable”, with four different providers operating in the area, so the box would be in demand.
It went on to state that people in deprived areas can lack both decent internet services and a safe place to make calls in a crisis, proposing both issues could be served by the kiosk.
Planning officials weren’t convinced, however.
They pointed out that one of the two older phone boxes is going to be removed by BT due to lack of use, with just 12 calls coming from it in the space of a year and none of them going to helplines.
There’s also a modern phone booth at the top of a relatively close hill, planners stated, which appears to be in good working order.
They also rejected the claim about mobile coverage, stating the “area is not one of weak or variable phone signal” according to an Ofcom checker.
And they stated Ballymena already has public access defibrillators at its recycling centre, fire station and central library.
Concluded one planner: “I do not consider that a need for the kiosk has been sufficiently demonstrated at this particular location.”
An application for a second New World kiosk near the town’s Fairhill Shopping Centre was also refused, planners citing broadly similar reasons. Appeals against both refusals were lodged last week, but it will likely be some time before they are heard.