Saved! BT phone box at Compton

The pips were just about to go

A Devon village is to keep its old-fashioned red telephone box after a campaign led by its MP.

Villagers in Compton on the outskirts of Torbay feared that BT was set to take away the phone box beside the main road leading from Marldon to Ipplepen.

Mobile phone signal is poor in the deep valley, and there were fears that without the phone box there may be problems calling the emergency services.

But the phone company has had a change of heart.

“It’s fantastic news!” said South Devon Liberal Democrat MP Caroline Voaden.

She said that as soon as she was alerted to the potential loss of the box, she wrote to BT expressing ‘deep concern’ and urging them to reconsider. 

Mrs Voaden added: “Compton is situated in a significant dip in the landscape, which results in extremely poor mobile phone coverage. For many residents and visitors, mobile signals are either unreliable or entirely unavailable.

“The telephone box is the only consistently reliable means of contacting the authorities in Compton and is particularly important in an emergency.”

BT is gradually phasing out public phone boxes, saying that the vast majority of people no longer use them to make calls. At their height there were 100,000 phone boxes across the country, but now there are around 20,000.

Of those, just 3,000 are the iconic red boxes, first designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott 100 years ago.

Mrs Voaden went on: “I’m glad BT has listened to these concerns and the unique and pressing needs of the community. Congratulations to all the local campaigners and councillors for working so hard to get this result.”