Legislation amending the 2017 Electronic Communications Code came into force in February which affects all those landowners on whose land telecoms apparatus is sited. The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 (PSTI Act) was originally introduced in order to make it easier to install the necessary kit to enable country-wide installation of 5G networks. The ambitious aim of the legislation was to balance the often competing interests of all involved parties while concluding agreements for new sites and renewing agreements for existing sites as quickly as possible.
There are several parts to the legislation that will be of particular interest to landowners. First, the Act amends both the 2017 Code and the 1954 Act affecting both rent valuations and compensation payments for existing agreements. Under the PSTI Act, valuations will now be conducted in line with the methodology laid out in the Code, rather than that specified by the 1954 Act which uses the comparable method and is, as such, more generous than the approach adopted by the Code. On the other hand, the compensation will be put on a statutory footing which should prove more palatable and provides more certainty than the approach set out under the 1954 Act wherein the amount of compensation is negotiable.
Second, operators with Code Rights will now be able to share and upgrade apparatus by right, including apparatus that was already installed when the Code came into being. This right is caveated by a requirement that any such upgrading should have ‘no material impact’ on the landowner and that the necessary notices should be issued. For landowners, this right may mean that they will have to charge less for the extra equipment being installed than under the previous regime.
Finally, if operators encounter resistance when serving notices, they must consider alternative dispute resolution (ADR) providing it is ‘reasonably practicable to do so’ rather than applying directly to court for a judgment. However, when it comes to landowners choosing not to respond to a request from the operators for Code Rights, the operators have recourse to a court order to settle the matter.
