I was away the first time and found the cable about 2cm under the mud and noticed some of my plants had been turned upside down. No one at OpenReach would speak to me because I wasn’t the customer. I called in a fault and someone appeared within 2 hours, said it was indefensible and I asked him to remove the cable - he did, but OpenReach didn’t really comment on anything apart from ‘it’s been sorted, sorry’.
The supervisor texted me the following some time after:
There isn’t a process available to me to separately register the removal of the cable. I have, however, informed the complaints team that the cable has been removed, so they are aware of the current situation.
The next step will be for your neighbour to wait for his installation appointment. When the appropriate team attends, they will be able to confirm that there is currently no cable in place and re-plan the work accordingly.
This will allow the correct job pack and associated permissions/wayleaves to be put in place before any civils work is passed to my team. We can then ensure that any work is carried out in the correct location and with the appropriate permissions in place.
I have also contacted the fibre team directly to explain the situation so that they are aware of what has happened and what will be required going forward.
Apologies for any confusion caused.
Weeks go by and I’m away again and return to find the cable is still under the lawn but now in a duct (which is mine) and branches off to the neighbour. A formal complaint was made as again, I knew nothing about it. OpenReach is stalling now to give me a final written resolution as they don’t want to follow the original plan which was for a duct to be put in the neighbour’s land.
