Saving our Rural Phone Boxes - Council Vetos BT Plans to Scrap "Icons of England"

Saving our Rural Phone Boxes - Council Vetos BT Plans to Scrap "Icons of England"

BT may be on a mission to scrap all their uneconomic public phone boxes but thankfully local councils have a right of veto and are using it.

So I say well done to Winchester City Council which, according to this week's Hampshire Chroncicle, has just used its veto to preserve 37 of the 44 boxes threatened by BT. The reasons are mainly the poor level of mobile phone covereage or that they are in a key location for emergency calls.

This also follows a previous campaign in 2008 when residents convinced Winchester City Council to save 41 out of 43 blacklisted boxes.

Many of these boxes are our beloved red kiosks that are a part of our national heritage and promoted by Bill Bryon in the Campaign to Protect Rural England's fantastic and heart-warming book Icons of England ... so I have to say the romantic in me wants these to be preserved for posterity even if they are uneconomic.

BT does allow council's to "Adopt a Kiosk" (for £1 I think) with the wordings removed if they still want to save a kiosk for aesthetic or historic reasons butcannot justify the veto. Hopefully this will save even more and keep this dramatic element of our rural landscapes.

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