‘Ugly’ phone boxes that blight UK streets should be removed, says thinktank | Telecommunications industry

The new Labour government should remove “ugly” modern phone kiosks that are blighting high streets and attracting litter and graffiti, a leading thinktank has said.

A report by Create Streets, founded by the government adviser Nicholas Boys Smith, says there is little need for phone boxes any more and that they do not feature much on the streets of Paris or New York.

Unlike the classic red phone box, these kiosks are created and sponsored by phone companies and usually made of clear glass.

The report outlines battles between local councils and the big communications corporations, which mean it can cost councils tens of thousands of pounds to get even a single phone box removed. The authors say legislative changes could be needed to give local government enhanced powers to ensure kiosk removal is more straightforward and less costly. At the moment, the companies that own the kiosks can charge tens of thousands in compensation for lost advertising money from the boxes. The report recommends the law is changed so they are only compensated for the costs of removal.

Boys Smith said: “Box blight is a menace hiding in plain sight, attracting litter, cluttering up our pavements and making all our streets and square a little bit uglier and less pleasant. We don’t have to put with this and we shouldn’t. Other countries don’t. Our paper sets out practical steps that the new government can take now to make our streets and town centres better and more prosperous.”

The report notes that calls from phone boxes have declined 99.5% from 800m minutes in 2002 to only 4m in 2021-22 due to the ubiquity of mobile phones. It also found that more than half of phoneboxes are likely to be “blighting” the UK’s streets; in one central London study of 64 phone boxes, four had been repurposed, 27 were in a poor state of repair externally, 25 were not operational and 14 were both in a poor condition and not operational. Only half were in a good state of repair and more than 40% were no use to anyone. If these numbers are extrapolated across the UK’s 15,800 phone boxes, it suggests about 6,300 are suffering from “box blight”.

Alexander Jan, chair of the Central District Alliance, a business support group, said: “London’s pavements (and those of our fellow urban areas) are frequently littered with an array of semi-abandoned modern phone kiosks. These act as magnets for graffiti, littering, fly tipping, drug taking and worse. Councils and business improvement districts spend thousands of pounds a year dealing with them. Outrageously, the only value they typically generate is advertising revenue for their corporate owners.”

Create Streets said the the government should amend the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to make it easier to remove phone boxes, and that it should consult on and draft new legislation to require that communication equipment is kept in a good state of repair.

The report also said Historic England should list all the remaining classic red phone boxes, and that these should be kept in a state of good repair as they are part of Britain’s heritage.