Outrage as BT threatens to axe phone boxes

The age of the mobile phone has caught up with the traditional pavement kiosk.

BT plans to remove the kiosks next month in a thinning out of the service.

But emergency services say not everyone carries a mobile phone and the traditional kiosk remains essential. A further nine kiosks in Rother threatened.

BT says it is responding to the public's changing communications needs revealed in a national review of kiosk use. Some 12,000 telephone boxes nationwide will be removed from areas where there are too many kiosks for the level of demand. Rother council is appealing for concerned members of the public to send comments to the Town Hall by Friday so it can present a case to BT.

Fire Brigade Station Officer Tim Mahoney said: "The key thing for the fire service is early warning and that would require access to telecommunications by members of the public.

"If you are, for example, at the scene of a road traffic accident where somebody is obviously not indoors and with access to a phone this can be difficult. I know mobile phones are used extensively these days but not everyone has them and time is of the essence.

"Any reduction in the means for people to give the earliest possible warning is a matter of concern."

At Bexhill police station, Sergeant Trish Reeve-Fowkes said: "Especially with the population balance we have in Bexhill it would be dangerous to rely too much on mobile phones. Not everyone has one, especially older people. Telephone kiosks are still a necessary part of our first line of defence. We still get a large number of emergency calls from telephone boxes.

"The police are always asking for the public to report things to them as soon as they happen. Telephone boxes are still an essential part of the community's needs and we need them there for us."

A BT spokesman said: "There is no reason for the emergency services to be concerned. We will still maintain the payphone services in all the areas we currently cover. The idea is to thin-out the number of payphones, not to remove the service.

"We have seen is a drop in calls of more than a third over the two last years from pay phones. Where there are two or more kiosks together we will be taking one or two away."

Cash payphones would be retained in preference to phonecard boxes, the spokesman said.

Rother regeneration and environment chairman Cllr Stuart Earl wants to now of any hardships the removal of the boxes would create."

Let the St Mark's Ward councillor or Cllr Jean Hopkinson (Sackville Ward) and Cllr Sue Prochak (Salehurst Ward) know by next Friday at the Town Hall in writing.

Or respond by e-mail on www.rother. gov.uk/phonebox