Why don’t councils remove these hideous things?

by Low_Union_7178

30 comments
  1. Cheaper to keep them than increasing the availability of public toilets

  2. They put defibrillators in the old phone boxes in the countryside

  3. Councils have to pay the telephone companies quite a large amount to remove them. Due to the advertising income that many phone boxes get. Although the revenue from calls is practically non-existant. The councils also have to pay the telecoms company to patch up the pavement after they’re removed. Unless the council is resurfacing the pavement at the same time as the box is removed. There is an issue where they have to be retained. If a certain amount of calls are to 999, Childline and other similar organisations.

    There’s also no second hand market for used phone boxes, that aren’t the classic K1-K6 and K7/8 on the margins. The one on the pic is a KX series probably a KX-100 and they’ll probably just get scrapped. The old K models can go for several thousand pounds when refurbished. So BT does have an incentive to pull them out.

    In Australia now, to let the telephone boxes remain and for the telecoms companies to keep the advertising revenue. Phone boxes have to be free and provide USB charging ports. So they are actually useful and get used. As who hasn’t run out of charge or had a low battery at a vital moment? BT has tried a similar scheme but it hasn’t been rolled out widely.

  4. BT has a Universal Service Obligation to maintain a network of payphones – Ofcom hold them to this and they periodically get to negotiate down the number they have to have.

    The current system more or less give local authorities a veto on removals outside of this, and in many cases councils put out a blanket no to removals, largely because they’re full of old busybodies who think these are still an essential public utility.

  5. Turn it into a library. You clean it up, add a small book case or similar shelving and dump some unwanted books in there. Maybe prop the door open too.

  6. Oh great. So how am I then supposed to find a masseuse?

  7. For a second there I thought this was spotted on rightmove.

  8. They’re a vital source of advertising for local call girls, duh 

  9. You mean a perfectly good studio in London in a competitive area? Plenty of light and own front door £1000 per month plus bills 😉

  10. Just incase the local crackheads burner phone dies and they need a shit.

  11. Because then drunk people would have nowhere to relieve themselves with privacy

  12. I don’t know if this is for all of them but often the council kind of can’t remove them as they are owned by their operators. My local council was desperately trying to get our phone boxes torn down but BT wasn’t interested so we just couldn’t.

  13. That’s just what Gen Alpha Time Lord TARDISes look like.

  14. Some have been turned into defibs, and there’s one I know of in north Finchley that’s been done up nicely so maybe more have

  15. That’s like a historical monument now, needs to be preserved the way it changed with time

  16. I used to love finding pictured phone cards ,.sometimes with credit unused * in phone boxes back in the early 90*s

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