Rural business association slams parties’ lack of plans to address ‘appalling’ connectivity
And here is our second article on the same theme, reinforcing the fact that there is a big job to be done here whichever party ends up running the country.
Even though the Conservative Party and Labour Party have published manifesto pledges to expand broadband coverage to rural areas, and the Liberal Democrats have pledged to invest in mobile data infrastructure and expand it to cover all homes, rural diversification consultancy Rural Solutions, an advisory business for UK landowners and land-based businesses, said any future UK government will not be able to fix what it calls “appalling” levels of mobile connectivity in rural areas without a more radical policy for siting communications masts.
The criticism comes even after the government in October set out its plans to make radical improvements to mobile phone coverage across the country. Working in conjunction with the four leading UK operators, the £1.3bn scheme, the Shared Rural Network (SRN), proposes to wipe not-spots from the map, giving what the government claims will be “high-quality” 4G coverage to 95% of the country by 2025.
But speaking just before the launch of the Conservative manifesto, which also promises to provide greater mobile coverage across the UK, Joanne Halton, head of planning at Rural Solutions, said rural areas were still blighted by poor connectivity in many places, with designated zones for siting network masts being the missing solution.
She dismissed what the major parties were offering, emphasising that none of their plans and pledges would successfully address the problem of “appalling” mobile 4G and 5G coverage in rural areas.
At the heart of the issue was a lack of regard for planning applications, said Halton. “We won’t get the connectivity levels that political parties say they aspire to achieve without a further relaxation of planning regulations,” she said. “If any government is serious about rural connectivity, it needs to urgently modify its regulation of mast locations and heights in designated scenic and historic areas, which encompass much of rural Britain.