The regional Openreach Customer Network Solutions Manager contacted Spurtle today to allay local concerns about telephone engineers working on the Heriot (‘Sandy’) Hill site and neighbouring buildings.
Kieron Freyne says he was among the genuine BT engineers on-site last month, wearing the requisite ID. They had accessed the area with legal authority, and permission from at least one resident in each tenement block.
They left, he says, after receiving a verbal threat.
Whilst some locals accepted the workers’ genuine status, Freyne thinks others may have grown suspicious because, on contacing BT’s Security Department and asking staff there if they knew of any engineers in their Broughton backgreens, BT Security staff told them they did not. With over 10,000 engineers nationwide, they simply can’t know where everybody is at all times of the day.
The resultant misunderstanding was fuelled by strong feelings in the area over consented plans for new houses on the steep, congested site.
Tangled in trees
Freyne says the developer is paying for phone wires to be moved. The most elegant solution would have been to attach four wall-boxes to nearby tenements. This would have had the benefit of preventing wires from becoming tangled in trees, which causes disruptions to service.
Now, however, the wires will be attached to two (rather than the existing four) repositioned poles on the development site. Problems with entanglement are likely to continue.
Freyne sympathises with locals’ disgruntlement, but says he and his colleagues have a job to do. When they return, they will always show their IDs if asked to do so. However, if any resident is still concerned about the genuine credentials of OpenReach staff, they may contact him on Tel. 01506 852 111.
[Image top-right: Created by IHeartVector, Creative Commons.]