CityFibre has been criticised by a homeowner in Southend-on-Sea (Essex, England) after the operator accidentally built one of their new full fibre broadband ISP street cabinets, without permission, on a private garden. But then, after attempting to rectify their mistake, “left the garden in ruins – an unsafe and hazardous mess“.
Just to recap. The operator, which has already extended their FTTP network to cover 4 million premises across the United Kingdom, officially announced the completion of their £51m project to deploy full fibre lines across the city of Southend-on-Sea (c. 70,000 premises) in December 2023 (here). Since then, they have been busy trying to reach further areas, including “new build properties, those on private or unadopted roads and business parks.”
NOTE: Network operators are usually allowed to install new street cabinets under
Permitted Development (PD) rights, often with only minimal prior notification (
Code of Practice). But private property is different and requires that permission be granted first.
One such area of expansion appears to have occurred along Concorde Road, but all didn’t go quite according to plan after CityFibre’s engineers ended up plonking a new street cabinet on a private garden. Such mistakes are very rare and usually get identified before any civil engineering work takes place by third-party contractors, but they do sometimes happen.
However, in this case, one of the occupants of the home happened to be a specialist solicitor in dispute resolution and employment, Nadia Stillwell, who also has a strong online profile (Linkedin).
Nadia Stillwell said:
“Imagine coming home from work, looking forward to relaxing, only to find your front garden—a space you’ve cared for and enjoyed—completely destroyed. A massive 2-metre green box has been installed without your knowledge or consent. The grass? Gone. In its place, a muddy, uneven pit of chaos with a sprinkling of grass seed in freezing cold weather.
That’s exactly what happened to us in December 2024. CityFibre entered our property without notice, dug up the front garden, and installed a cabinet that didn’t belong there. They later admitted their mistake as it is private land (someone didn’t read the land registry documents), removed the cabinet after pressure from the council, but left the garden in ruins—an unsafe and hazardous mess. This is a snippet of the wrong doings!
For the past six weeks, I’ve tried to get CityFibre to take responsibility. I’ve followed up repeatedly, and yet, they’ve ignored every single communication. The damage to the property is extensive and expensive and there’s no sign of accountability from their side.
As a lawyer, I’m no stranger to fighting for justice—but as a person experiencing this firsthand, I truly understand the frustration, stress, and sense of powerlessness my clients feel when faced with similar challenges.”
In fairness, on roads like this it can sometimes be difficult to identify where the public verge/pavement ends and the private property begins (see image below), which may be a contributing factor in how the cabinet ended up in the wrong location. Nevertheless, both CityFibre and the Council did later acknowledge that it was on private land, hence the decision to move it.
The issue that Nadia now has is with CityFibre’s seemingly ineffective remedy to the damage they left behind and their lack of communication. One of the operator’s agents did in fact respond to her post on Tuesday and stated that they were now “liaising with the property owner on this case“, which prompted the primary property owner, Luke Stillwell, to say “there has been no communication after over a month!“. Oops.
ISPreview has since raised the issue with CityFibre and was given the following statement.
A CityFibre spokesperson told ISPreview:
“One of our teams mistakenly installed a roadside cabinet on private land on 18th December. We have removed the cabinet, apologised to Mr and Mrs Stillwell, and are working with them to restore the lawn to its original condition.”
Nadia has now confirmed that CityFibre have finally responded to their hails after a long period of silence, but it remains to be seen whether a satisfactory resolution can be reached. Mistakes happen, but it’s often in how you remedy those that really matters, and in this case it appears as if CityFibre still has some work to do.
