Wiltshire UK Council Take Openreach to Court Over Broadband Permits UPDATE
The Wiltshire Council in England has confirmed that it’s taking UK broadband and telecoms giant Openreach (BT) to the Swindon Magistrates Court over a dispute related to permits. The hearing is set to take place on 1st July 2026 and could potentially result in the network access provider being fined thousands of pounds.
Openreach’s new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network has already reached more than 215,000 properties across Wiltshire, which they’re continuing to expand via both commercial deployments and publicly subsidised Project Gigabit contracts. On the whole this has been going well, but the local authority recently identified a number of problems.
According to Wiltshire Council (via the Wiltshire Times), Openreach is accused of carrying out a number of street (road) works without a permit. The claim is that the network operator failed to seek permits for work it carried out in Weymouth Street, Warminster in September and October 2024 (the road was closed in both directions during these works).
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The local authority also claims Openreach conducted work on the A350 at Semley (Shaftsbury) and on the A30 at Barford St Martin, near Wilton, without a permit. Openreach are said to be denying a total of seven charges.
Cllr Martin Smith, Cabinet Member for Highways, said:
“Our Network Management Team has initiated prosecution proceedings against Openreach in relation to three separate incidents where roads were closed without securing the required permission from the highway authority. As this is an active legal case, we are unable to comment further at this time.”
This is of course not the first time that a major national UK telecoms operator like Openreach has faced such a case, indeed BT faced similar charges in Cumbria (England) last year and ended up being fined a total of £9,000 at the Barrow Magistrates Court (here). Various other network operators have also fallen foul of the rules in recent years (examples here, here and here). Such cases are rare, but they do crop up from time to time.
At present, we don’t know the detailed context of the latest incidents, as there can sometimes be mitigating circumstances involved (e.g. third-party contractors or network operators finding it cheaper to take a fine than follow the tedious official route). In many cases operators often end up being charged under Section 71 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 and Regulation 19 of the Traffic Management Permit Scheme (England) Regulations 2007.
We have asked Openreach to comment on this report, although it wouldn’t be surprising if they declined while the legal case is active.
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UPDATE 17th Feb 2026 @ 11am
Just a small correction. BT (a separate legal entity) was the Defendant in the Cumbria matter, not Openreach directly.
A spokesperson for Openreach said:
“We are unable to comment due to the fact that the proceedings are ongoing.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Oh dear!
This could affect BT Ivor’s shares! 🙂
I thought according to the BT protectors on here, that this sort of thing was pesky upstart Altnets not the mighty BT falling foul.
Who checks if a company has a permit and who has the energy to report it?
Just sad.
Local Highways authorities often identify this themselves, particularly if people start complaining about roads being closed that they’ve had no prior notice about. You can imagine how angry that might make you if it caused unexpected disruption to your area. Road works aren’t exactly stealthy.
Highways inspector
The blocking of streets by uncoordinated roadworks can put lives at risk if there are no alternative routes for emergency vehicles.
Probably less hassle just to pay the fine & accept it as an occupational hazard if the council is trying to make them jump through hoops to do the work.
Very unlikely that any provider will just rock up and spontaneously start digging. I wouldn’t be surprised if OR’s defence is that it was already permitted under a previous application and the council don’t know what they are doing!
Ed, sorry to say your wrong in your statement. That is precisely what they did in my town. And when the Sefton officer, attended the location at the time of working, and showed them there was no permit, they ignored him and still installed the pole. which was later removed
These fines are a drop in the ocean for a big company like Openreach. UK Councils are on the prowl to fine anyone and everyone, wherever they can. Don’t pour coffee down a grid, or have your bumper overhanging a box junction, they’ll go after you with a vengence.
Local Highways authorities often struggle to identify and repair basic issues like potholes, which makes it difficult to have confidence in the accuracy of this article. If the claims are true, perhaps their priority should be improving road safety and maintenance rather than focusing on enforcing payments for highway control.
It seems contradictory to pursue charges while relying on the very same systems and services provided by these companies to log, monitor, and track highway activity. Ensuring roads are safe and properly maintained should come first before shifting attention to administrative or financial enforcement.
Hi Rob, in most councils these are dealt with by different departments. I work for a Local Authority as a Highways Inspector, but my remit is utility companies and their in progress works, and periodically checking their reinstatements for the duration of their guarantee period (usually 2 years). In the case of potholes, these are dealt with by an authorities principal contractor.
I understand the frustration with the bureaucracy of it all, and agree to an extent how silly it is, and certainly how silly it appears from an outsiders perspective – however this will *hopefully* change following the local government reform in the coming months.
Back to the accuracy of the article, the Department for Transport recently increased the prices of all of the fixed penalty notices an authority can issue, as well as the costs for permits. A road closure is a minimum of £1500 now, an increase from around £850 last year. This has resulted in many companies ‘chancing’ it and carrying out works without a permit, because the fines for unauthorised works are oftentimes less than the cost of raising a permit in the first place. Hence the decision to prosecute in the courts – partly to ‘prove a point’ and partly to remind utilities that a local authority has this right, and will use it when necessary.
@Rob the highwayman – The accuracy of the article is down to Mark and I am quite confident about his journalism. Perhaps you are questioning the validity of the charges?
in my town, Openreach were refused a pole installation works permit, twice. Then, on the day they turned up and installed a pole without any permit or informing Sefton Council. Thankfully a Sefton Highways official witnessed this event and by the Sefton management systems had the pole removed in 4 hours. Later, the Openreach posted on the Mastdatabase permit page, it was a “replacement pole as the first pole was damaged by a tractor and trailer”. The problem was;- there was NEVER a pole in that location in the road in the first place! Openreach caught red handed and its assumed fined for damage to the highway!
You’re conflating two separate things – the permission to install the pole and the roadworks permission, where required, to do the work.
No council will remove a pole because the roadworks permission was many correctly sought.
The very same Council or the people working to them would be quick to complain if their telephone or Broadband systems had gone belly up!
Use to work for open reach traffic management before a road closure takes place a permit got to be issue date and time with road diversion to the council in most cases they will granted the work to go ahead. Which in down to the contractors to display the permit reference number