5G

(asked on 15th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what rights private landowners have to oppose the installation of 5G masts on their property.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 20th December 2022

The Government is committed to providing good quality digital infrastructure and mobile coverage, including 5G, across the UK. This will ensure that people are able to stay connected and businesses are able to grow. Digital connectivity is important now more than ever. The Government’s ambition for the majority of the UK population to have access to 5G by 2027 was met 5 years early with basic “non-standalone” 5G. Non-standalone 5G is available outside up to 77% of UK premises.

At all times, however, government policy in this area works to keep a proportionate balance between public benefits of digital rollout, and the rights of individual landowners.

Rights to install and keep electronic communications apparatus on public and private land are regulated by the Electronic Communications Code (“the Code”). Rights relating to apparatus on private land are normally agreed through negotiation between a landowner and communications operator.

Where a consensual agreement cannot be reached, the operator can ask a court to consider whether rights should be imposed. It is important to note, however, that the imposition of those rights is not automatic.

In these cases, the court will take into account whether the proposed installation is in the public interest and whether the landowner can be adequately compensated in deciding whether or not the requested rights should be imposed.

In addition to the need to comply with the requirements of the Code, the installation of apparatus must also comply with any planning requirements. Most telecommunications infrastructure, such as new masts and base stations, now benefit from nationally set permitted development rights. Permitted development rights enable certain types of development to be undertaken without the need for a full planning application, where the need to apply for permission would be out of proportion with the impacts of development. However, new ground-based masts still require the prior approval of local planning authority on certain matters, such as siting a design, before deployment can take place.

Local planning authorities are the decision makers for local planning decisions and must ensure that they are satisfied with things such as siting and appearance of the proposed development, before the permitted development rights are applied.

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