Phone Boxes on Falcon Road (2021/ 5699 & 5835); Usk /York Roads (5825 &5832); Beaufoy /Queenstown Roads (5698 &5701); St John’s Road (5387 &5843); and St John’s Hill (5286 &5834)

The Battersea Society objects to these applications to replace telephone boxes with “Street Hubs”.

 First, they will largely sustain, rather than reduce, the needless street clutter on busy, and often narrow pavements. BT’s claim that the Street Hubs occupy a quarter of the footprint of a telephone box is simply wrong, and by a very wide margin. The telephone boxes BT seeks to replace are 0.9*0.9 metres wide, with a footprint therefore of 0.81 sqm. The new Street Hubs are 0.35*1.24 metres wide, with a footprint therefore of 0.43 sqm, more than half that of the existing boxes, not a quarter as claimed. Moreover, since they are 0.34 metres (38%) wider than the existing boxes, they will, unless very carefully placed, add to the obstruction of narrow pavements. For the proposed sites on St John’s Hill and Queenstown Road, that added obstruction is especially significant. For those with prams, buggies, wheelchairs, and other walking aids, as well as blind and partially-sighted people, the narrowing of the pavement will be dangerous.

 Second, we see no evidence that either the existing phone boxes or the newer InLink installations, serve any useful purpose. The usage figures given in the brochure are grossly misleading, since they cover an 18 month period, and give no information about the number of InLink boxes across the country that they relate to. Our own observations indicate that both the phone boxes and the InLink installations in Battersea are used very rarely.

 Third, we note that BT has not as yet submitted any proposal to replace the other two telephone boxes on St John’s Road, opposite Marks and Spencer, which serve as entirely pointless clutter, obstructing the extremely busy pavement at that point.

 Fourth, the documentation submitted by BT makes clear that the key purpose the Street Hubs will fulfil is as a platform for advertisements; and we see no good reason for obstructing narrow and busy pavements with such advertisements.

 Fifth, it is both confusing and objectionable that as displayed on the planning portal, there are two separate applications, with different sets of documentation, for each of the five sites shown above. We trust that urgent action will be taken to rectify this.

 We trust that the Council will review these applications with great care, and that at the very least it will seek from BT

 a.    Correction of the false claims about the relative footprint of telephone boxes and the new Street Hub;

b.    Information about the current use of the existing telephone boxes and InLink installations, and whether they serve any useful purpose; and

c.     A review of the proposed siting of the Street Hubs to ensure that they present the least-possible obstruction to pedestrians.

 Finally, we note that it will be possible to add equipment to Street Hubs to monitor air quality, and both vehicle and pedestrian traffic levels. If it were to prove impossible to reject any or all of these applications, we trust that the Council will seek to ensure that such equipment is indeed added to the Street Hubs.