The broken policy behind Hebden Bridge’s mobile blackspot - Thomas Evans
Mobile signal in Yorkshire has never been perfect, but it recently reached breaking point. Hebden Bridge and nearby Mytholmroyd were cut off for weeks after the main mobile mast serving the valley went down. This wasn’t a freak outage. It was the result of a deeper problem: a little-known policy failure in Whitehall that has made it harder to keep the county connected.
Mobile coverage depends on thousands of agreements between landowners and the tower companies that now sit between operators and the network.
Under the old operator-led model, the incentives were aligned: operators needed coverage to serve customers, paid a fair rent, and communities like Yorkshire stayed connected.
But that balance was upended in 2017, when reforms to the Electronic Communications Code allowed operators to slash rents by up to 90 per cent and shifted commercial power towards tower companies acting on their own behalf - whose decisions do not always reflect local connectivity needs.
Previously cooperative relationships quickly turned into a David-versus-Goliath battle, with operators able to challenge existing agreements, drag hosts into long disputes and force new terms through the courts.
These reforms were supposed to speed up rollout. In reality, they have slowed delivery and damaged the cooperation the system depends on.
Hebden Bridge shows how easily things can unravel. In this case, the landlord served notice as early as December 2021 that the mast would need to be removed for redevelopment, giving more than two years advance warning. They even identified an alternative location to allow the infrastructure to be relocated and maintain signal in the valley.
Despite this lengthy notice period and a viable relocation option, the tower company chose to rely on its legal powers under the Code to resist termination rather than proactively securing a replacement site. The result was a protracted cycle of tribunal notices, stalled negotiations, redesigns and long periods of silence - all while the tower company remained fully aware that the lease would eventually end, whilst no prior warning was conveyed to residents about the risk of connectivity disruptions.
This case shows how the incentives for operators can be misaligned with the needs of local communities. Instead of prioritising continuity of service, the focus shifted towards litigation and delay. And when the lease was finally brought to an end, no contingency, replacement or plan for continuity had been secured.
The result was entirely predictable: a prolonged blackspot for residents and businesses, and a community left without the service it relied upon.
This pattern is being repeated across Yorkshire and the whole country.
When goodwill disappears, the network doesn’t just slow down - it risks going backwards. Our latest survey found around 35 per cent of landowners are now considering walking away from hosting altogether. And without people willing to host infrastructure, there is no connectivity.
We’re already seeing the impact in rural communities like Yorkshire. Ofcom’s latest figures show rural 5G coverage has barely moved - creeping from 16 to just 20 per cent - while cities race ahead. Nationally, the outlook is no better: the UK now ranks 30th out of 39 countries for 5G availability and 37th for quality.
Instead of reviewing whether 2017 reforms are working, Labour is preparing to extend the same rules to another 15,000 sites under the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act.
If we want to have the connectivity needed to thrive, the policy framework must be fixed. That means pausing the law expansion, reviewing the Code, and replacing today’s adversarial approach with one based on fair value, good-faith negotiation and swift, independent dispute resolution.
Thomas Evans is executive vice president of APWireless.