A Shropshire parish council could be left without a telephone line to its new office after a struggle with BT to get it activated.
Keith Osmund-Smith, chairman of the Gorge Parish Council, covering Ironbridge and the surrounding area, said it had hit a brick wall in its attempts to get access to a telephone and internet broadband line. The telecommunications firm today said it would investigate the issue as a matter of urgency.
The council had been searching for about a year to find an office so its clerk, Jayne Madeley, did not have to work from home and for residents to visit.
It has already started to decorate the unit at the Maws Craft Centre at Jackfield to move in on November 1, but when the council approached BT to get the line set up it hit problems.
Mr Osmund-Smith said: “It seems if you are a business and you are a registered business and the company is registered then that will satisfy them.
“If you are a private individual then they can do reference checks on you.”
But he said for a parish council, which had not had an account with BT before, it seemed more difficult to get a telephone line set up.
He accused BT of “lacking creativity and flexibility” and of “mind-numbing bureaucracy”.
Mrs Madeley said: “I spent and hour and a half on the phone to seven different employees of BT none of whom knew how to deal with a parish council.
“I felt exhausted and very frustrated at the way we were treated.”
She said the firm even asked for a credit check on the council’s financial officer or chairman as individuals but would not deal with the parish council as a corporate body.
The parish council has also contacted Telford MP David Wright, who said: “I will help them any way I can. BT needs to get its act together on this.”
Emma Tennant, spokesman for BT, said: “We will investigate this as a matter of urgency to enable them to get a service up and running as soon as we can.
“Obviously there are certain procedures we need to go through when setting up a service for a customer.”
By Lisa Rowley
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2 Comments
Good luck to them – the service experienced by my mother and father from BT this year was absolutely appalling, it took FOUR MONTHS for them to be connected to a land line when they moved to their retirement home, with calls to 27 different BT employees – a totally unacceptable situation for pensioners. BT need to review their customer service procedures, fast!
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Well I dont know what they are moaning about. Out here in the sticks we are not allowed Broadband for some strange reason – even if the cable runs right past your property!!
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