ANGRY residents and councillors met with their MP over controversial broadband pole installation plans.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP held a meeting in Willersey Village Hall with district councillors and a significant number of angry residents over a proposal from Full Fibre Limited to erect a large number of broadband poles.

Broadband poles have been a controversial subject matter elsewhere in the Cotswolds, with residents in Broadway protesting against their installation.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP said: ‘‘This is a crazy situation where a highly attractive village is being forced to accept a significant number of ugly wooden poles blighting people’s properties when a satisfactory broadband system already exists.

"I am trying to do all I can to support angry villagers in preventing this wholly unwanted and unpopular intrusion into villagers’ lives.’’

Villagers at Friday's meeting were outraged by proposals to install the new broadband system, prompting Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP to write to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation & Technology.

He urged that secondary legislation should be altered to prevent the installation of wooden poles where "a perfectly satisfactory underground broadband already exists."

He has also written to the chief planning officer at Cotswold District Council urging them to use what limited powers they have to impose the most stringent conditions.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP also wrote to the chief executive of Openreach to "actively encourage them to use their existing underground ducts to install a new broadband system, which would then make it unviable for Full Fibre to erect a new system involving expensive and totally unwanted new poles."

In Broadway, residents from The Sands estate formed a blockade on Thursday (November 2) and were protesting the following day to stop Full Fibre from erecting 22 broadband poles in the area.

One elderly protester was taken to hospital after an incident involving one of the Full Fibre vans. 

Two ambulances and two paramedic officers had attended the scene on Averill Close, where Full Fibre had started putting up the poles.

One man was also arrested on suspicion of locking on and preventing a worker from doing their work legally. He is now on bail.