UKC

This week I finally managed to get Grid References for the masts the UK Government plans to build for the Shared Rural Network

I have plotted these on the Wild Land areas designated by NatureScot - not a pretty sight!

There were 320 nominal sites, from which 274 have been chosen for build. The as-built sites may be shifted 1- 2km, but they are ALL in Wild Land. 

As walkers and climbers know, Wild Land is uninhabited, with no public roads or buildings and few visitors. Which makes it hard to see how these publicly-funded masts “will improve the lives of millions of people in rural parts of Scotland, giving them the connections they need to work, access services and keep in touch – both at home and on the go”

Never in the history of phone masts have  so many served so few - at such cost.

 The cost is around £1M per mast. But the real cost is the insult to the wildness of these areas; from not just the masts, but also generators, tracks, and refuelling vehicles.

The SRN was doubtless well-intentioned; but it went astray when it was set the target of eliminating large areas of NotSpots. Because in Scotland, most 4G NotSpots are in uninhabited Wild Land.

Wild Land does not ‘suffer’ from NotSpots, any more than it suffers from a lack of roads. This is a feature of Wild Land, which climbers value and will want to preserve. Ofcom has a duty to improve connectivity to the disadvantaged rural communities around (but not in) these wild areas. This is where support is needed, and where benefits will outweigh the costs, however you measure cost.

Wild Land is supposed to be protected from development, but the SRN is a nationwide head-on challenge to this philosophy. All Wild Land is threatened, because it is wild. Please join the growing call to pause and re-plan this element of SRN before it is too late.

Climbers across the UK have a special responsibility here, because they are cited1 by the government as a key ‘customers’ who need more reliable access to emergency services.  As frequent visitors to Wild Land, you need to say ‘not in my name’, otherwise you are assumed to be supportive. Mountain safety expert advice is a) take personal responsibility b) do not rely on a mobile phone, because it has short battery life and coverage will never be 100% c) for workers or serious montaineers, carry a PLB. Many local communities are objecting, as they too become aware of the previously unpublished details of the plan. But they need your support to stop this £500M government juggernaut.

Write to your MP, MSP, or repost.

1. Shared Rural Network Transparency Report by Building Digital UK.

This really is criminal bullshit of the highest order. I don't live in Scotland and wonder how much impact writing to Mark Harper (my constituency MP) will have.

Is there a consultation to respond to or is it to late for that?

I wrote to my MP (Ian Blackford - Ross, Skye & Lochaber), in whose constituency many of these mast sites are located, about this some months ago. He ignored me (other than an acknowledgement) despite a chase. I will chase him again - he is standing down at the next election, so I fear he has already given up.

I'll happily write to my MSP, but as this is a UK government initiative, I'm not sure what an MSP can do even if motivated.

Any other ideas for lobbying?

What is the BMC/MCoS stance on this?

Also what is the MRTs opinion.

As always, none of these are wild areas. They're sheep and grouse farms.

https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/coalition-asks-uk-government-to-review...

Not a particularly helpful response. In relative terms, many of these areas are very wild in the context of the British rural environment. Simply discounting the concept of wilderness as some form of ideological purity is to deny the very real natural beauty in many of these areas, and the gross visual intrusion that would be imposed by many of these masts, at significant cost and for little or no benefit to the local population. 

Written to my MP; I would really encourage others to do the same.

It may have been referring to the 'need' for grouse farms/shoots to have 5G infrastructure for their clients...

Thanks Dave. That map is alarming. Look at Fisherfield and Torridon (just for starters). This scheme is a farce, talk about unintended consequences. 

Have now chased my MP again and written to my MSP. Will post if either reply!

There are preferable, cost-competitive alternatives: 

https://www.stratosphericplatforms.com/technology/

That's without Starlink, it's competition when that arrives or direct-to-sat emergency comms. As a gapfiller for a few years, a handful of these would be much preferable, even taking the hydrogen expenditure into account. 

Yes, very little of it is a wilderness, most of it is a trashed agri-desert (with honourable exceptions.) But smashing it up further to put masts and generators in ? We can do better. 

Y

Ian Blackford's assistant has responded to me, presumably irked by my suggestion that he had given up being an MP early... She wrote:

"Mr Blackford is currently waiting on a response from the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, when he receives a response it will be sent to all constituents who have written to him regarding the Shared Rural Network."

As with the general population, opinions vary. That may resolve to no official position. 

(However, it's significantly easier to save your sorry arse with 4G coverage.)

You are right. Might as well just concrete them over.

you better discharge at Greenfield rate if you do that.

Could you share the grid refs please

cheers

Not going to happen. That would involve investment in the Highlands. 

Indeed. I don't get this sheep and grouse farms argument - despite being an ardent anti-grouse shooting bod. People are using the same argument for the Calderdale wind farm to be built. Just because something is a sheep and/or grouse farm, it doesn't mean that being the closest thing we have to wild means nothing. As sad as it is, these places are our last chances of having a wild. When the opportunity to develop them presents itself, we should be asking why are we happy to go ahead and industrialise them with concrete just because they're already 'industrial', when we should be looking the other way and asking how we can improve them as 'farms' for the benefit of the environment. Rarely does concrete, masts or windmills feature in such a course of action.

I guess the massive access tracks will mean mountain rescue can just drive up as well, bonus! 

Bit hyperbolic - but I think a radio mast is well within the way these areas have been "managed", or to use a more appropriate term, developed.

No, I think most people appreciate the "wildness",  emptiness and beauty of our moors and mountains despite the grouse, sheep, deer and deforestation. And radio masts infringe on that "wildness".

In fact I think many would argue that the man made sheep farming landscape of, say, the Lakes, has a genuine beauty of its own which should be valued and preserved. Just like the field and hedgerow cultivated beauty of much of the lowlands.

Saying that, just because a landscape is largely man made already, that "anything goes" is plain daft. 

Race to bottom ethos. How on earth does adding technology (let’s call it) to an area that has had trees/raptors/predators removed add up to the same thing? There’s management by removal, but thankfully replaceable, and there’s management by addition - and once it’s in it’s never likely coming out. 

Surely the aim should be to reduce the human footprint in remote places, not to increase it? 

The use of the terms 'managed' and 'developed' suggests to me some kind of neat and tidy environment, with everything in its place and a place for everything. Many of the proposed locations for these phone masts are anything but neat and tidy, but are rugged and are some of the most beautiful places in the UK. To most people, they are a very long way from being 'managed' and 'developed'.

Yep, you've put your finger on the problem here. 

"Most people" don't realise that a high proportion of these areas are agri-deserts "managed" into submission for sheep or grouse, and would be very different if raptors weren't illegally trapped or poisoned, muirs burned and sundry other practices. 

No, that's not a reason to accept more, intrusive, destructive and wasteful infrastructure "developments." But it does give perspective. 

Y

I wonder to what extent the idea that these areas are, to use your term, 'agri-deserts' is overstated. It's certainly true that there are areas where the emphasis is on management for the purposes you describe, but there are other areas which do not suffer in the same way but which, it seems, can be discounted as being special places simply because of some limited human intervention. 

I'm thinking in particular of the proposal, now thankfully withdrawn, for a mast in Torridon, between Liathach and Beinn Dearg, in a site which serves no useful purpose and is part of a magnificent mountain environment. The idea that this is some agri-desert, managed to within an inch of its existence, is nonsense. 

But they are not wild, which is my point. The wildness has already been infringed on by overarming and deforestation. It infuriates me that people act as if these environments are perfect, untouched ecosystems.

I've not said that at all, rather that we should be placing development in such context. I'm not actually a huge fan of these proposed developments, but I think the argument of "wilderness" is not the correct one. Preserving the current landscape is a much more honest way of getting the same message across. 

Yep, I chose a provocative term deliberately, I don't personally believe it's universally applicable. On the other hand... allowing deer to roam across landscapes where they would never have been is also "management", and ditto sheep. And once you remove the sheep, it's the bracken that recovers first and crowds out the other things, or so we're told (maybe it's true.) Does that remind you of Knoydart, the other "magnificent wilderness" we all praise so much ? It does remind me. 

Or you can read Osgood Mackenzie's (may have the name wrong) West Highland estate diaries of the late 1800s and reflect on how the lists of things he's shot fall year by year, and how many of them could be there now...

It's not nonsense that a very high proportion of this is a very damaged landscape, and that that is not as widely understood as it might be. 

Y

As per my post above - I'm not a fan of these installations, as they will change the current environment and make it harder to restore to the condition it should be in. Which is far from its current condition, which is an ecological shit show (and I'm sure we can all agree there!). I just think it's a little disingenuous to refer to these landscapes as wild, when actually they need a lot of environmental and ecological remediation - referring to them as wild normalises their current state. 

As for race-to-the-bottom ethos: that's the UK governments mantra with all things environmental, just look at your local shit filled river.

And those peoples perception is incorrect, which is the core of my point. See posts above. We should bet aiming to repair the damage done to these places, but it seems that the status quo is one that is accepted. If we are going to continue to treat uplands as low-density farms and leisure sites, then we are accepting development into which a radio mast fits. What we should be doing is landscape restoration, which is completely at odds with any mast building. 

My expectation is that the long access tracks and the diesel generators will never be installed for the most remote sites.

The budget isn't going to cover such expensive civils work.

My expectation is that these sites will end up replacing the diesel generators with renewable options, plus a larger battery capacity. And that the access tracks will be replaced by helicopter access.

Any evidence for these expectations? Cos that doesn't seem to be whats in the applications that have been publicised on here. 

Why? What makes a phone mast an acceptable part of the landscape in places where you say we should be restoring landscape to a previous version? 

Surely refusing these applications is a part of the journey towards restoration? If the masts are built, surely the environment is further degraded, which seems at odds with your desire for landscape restoration? 

This is precisely why I put wildness in inverted commas. They have a feeling of wildness; of being away from it all. Something worth preserving and hopefully improving. Nobody is saying they are perfect untouched ecosystems.

I've drafted a quick template letter. I reckon we can have an impact if even half of us lurking here ping this off to Scottish + UK gov? Feel free to edit at will! 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WJ-SgcK2wU7Y0wM8xCoMMtNqgFCKsw4RxuSWLcY... 

Correct no evidence, plans state tracks and generators.

As for the civil works being too expensive, no matter what the application says these won’t be restored, landscaped, revegetated and have green strips up the middle. Everyone knows from the micro hydro and stalking tracks over the past decade; they can just walk away and councils are too strapped to chase. They will be done by a couple of men; one in a digger and another in a dumper.

If its economic to put them in for stalking, often low grade forestry and intermittently operating run of the river hydroelectric, then masts will be no different.

As much as an ecological shit show they may well be, they do still contain all the relevant flora and fauna that they would if they were restored for the benefit only of the environment, even if it is only a trace element. Cough, hen harriers, cough.. etc. So as much as they are farms, the wider aesthetic and ‘experience’ isn’t too dissimilar to what you’d find from a restored environment. 

It’s probably also worth noting that with restoration would come more restrictions on access. As many gamekeepers might have rued the introduction of CRoW it’s probably also done them a favour in allowing wide spread human access to the remotest corners and crags which in turn keeps pesky raptors at bay. If you wanted restoration, and proper restoration, then it’d be likely some crags or parts thereof would have to be given up entirely to allow them to return to nature etc. Mosses, lichens, flowers would need to recolonise them to enable a fully functioning ecosystem. I think we should be very careful what we wish for. 

As an aside my local river is actually very clean, but I do live only a mile and a half from its source! 

Just counting.

The government funding isn't enough to cover the huge civils work involved in some of these sites. The networks won't progress a site that is going to lose them a small fortune, and they aren't going to find civils contractors willing to do the work for a loss either.

So one of 3 things happens:

1) The government increases the budget significantly

2) The more expensive sites get scrapped altogether 

3) The proposals get scaled back significantly to something a lot cheaper. Helicopter access might be expensive if you look at it over 10 years, but this year's and next year's budgets are what the decisions will be made on.

1) isn't going to happen, 2) will be threatened, and 3) will be the likely compromise.

These sites are still a long way from being built.

I have seen generators and diesel tanks at some recent sites. Sometimes these tanks would be refilled from a bowser trailer or just by the local gas oil supplier's truck if the road access is good enough (fuel contractors in the Highlands are capable of heroic access tasks!). The tank needs to be bunded to the latest standards. Swapping out the tank is a preferred method in some instances because it reduces the chances of an oil spill in a sensitive area. Swapping is the standard method for sites with only helicopter access. The tanks I have seen recently look like about 900 litres which makes sense because the underslung for an AS350 is 900kg. When I did this stuff 25 years ago we were paying between £1000 and £1500 for a helicopter job to phone sites depending on the flying time and relocation charges. I can't remember how many months 900 litres lasts (probably in a notebook in the loft somewhere). If they have optimised generator operation and power consumption in the intervening years then it might be quite a while.

Mains power has been taken to the strangest places during the development of mobile networks. However, all manner of other arrangements exist including at least one MNO's site generator that supplies electricity to the adjacent farmhouse in a glen with no main supply. 

Right so no evidence.  While I admire your optimism I'm probably going to go with what the people who are actually building these things have put in their plans.

I would very much like to think that the developers would both be doing this as it benefits rural communities and build them with the least impact, but so far in all the public documents, which is all we have to go on, mention neither of these.  

The things that have been put in the plans do not always bear much relation to reality. Documents for the Torridon proposal made reference to an ATV track up the glen, when in fact anyone who knows the area knows that the path is not an ATV track and photographs in the proposal documentation show access via a footpath - very much not an ATV track. 

Right, but I think wishfull thinking of what we would like to happen or what might be sensible vs what the developers are saying they are going to do is a pretty risky strategy. 

Prepare to be (yet again) underwhelmed by Mountaineering Scotlands focus. Members News has just popped in my inbox and not a dickie-bird about masts. No update, no repeated call for action, no comment.

Do you get that sense of that we might be revisiting the situation in Covid when we hoped they were working in our behalf vigorously behind the senses and the strategy would become apparent, only to find out they were doing as little as possible, and didn’t want (or were unwilling) to even ask us how we wanted to be represented

Very few people do that but it doesn't mean they have no value, any more than Westminster Abbey has no value "because it's man made". Yoru clever dick pedantry is childish - if  you really don't care just piss of to Slough and stay there.

Like you I am concerned about these masts and I understand why you are riled up about them. I’m  living in the highlands I think it’s ridiculous that areas with people actually living in them are not being prioritised for better phone signal. Instead these masts are being built in wild land areas for minimal benefit but with maximum ecological harm. However Mountaineering Scotland are responding to the masts issue and are working in collaboration with other environmental organisations for maximum impact, which was outlined in their latest magazine. Their organisation only has one staff member covering access and conservation work in, and knowing them personally I know they do good work. Not aimed at you but I read somewhere in a similar thread that all mountaineering Scotland has been doing is selling hats with no information about this serious issue on their website. However a quick google threw up multiple links to their response to this matter in the past year.  Mountaineering Scotland do good work in promoting mountain safety and providing subsidised courses for members amongst others things. Perhaps this issue could be placed more front of centre on their website. In my opinion I think any vitrol generated by these mast proposals should be directed at the developers and the UK government for pursuing this tick box exercise 

https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/the-highland-council-supports-rethink-...

https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/coalition-demands-meeting-with-phone-o...

https://www.mountaineering.scot/assets/contentfiles/pdf/Final-joint-masts-p...

https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/coalition-asks-uk-government-to-review...

https://www.mountaineering.scot/news/shared-rural-network-statement

Thank you for proving my point, all those links are buried.

Take a look at the root landing page;

https://www.mountaineering.scot/

No mention, no call to action, no obvious campaign; you wouldn’t know there was a massive threat to our iconic landscapes, and then in members news no mention at all.

Completely underwhelming, wake up and smell the coffee; MS is no longer an organisation that wants to overtly and vociferously campaign on our behalf. It’s happy accepting Sports Scotland funding, and ‘not rocking the boat’.

OR
the balance of views within the membership is not clear cut
AND
the organisation has a commitment to mountain safety which might be enhanced by better communications. 

What we may be witnessing is a failure by Ofcom to create a valuable measure of success for the expansion of networks. 

Previously, the measure of success was population coverage. It provided coverage primarily where people lived. It's biggest flaw was to not provide coverage where people would most need their phones.

So now we switch to geographic coverage and fall straight into the same type of trap. A typical problem is that instead of maybe providing cover for not=spots along the A87, useful for mountaineers and rescuers in Glen Shiel and by broken down motorists, estate workers and hotel guests, more new area is covered by placing a mast near the Falls of Glomach where it will be far less useful but ticks the box big style for additional geographic coverage. 

So a user density coverage metric may be more useful, combining both population and geographic coverage...?

Indeed I think it is the naive 95% geographic coverage target that is driving the siting of masts in "wild" areas, masts that typically will not serve any house (let alone community!) or road. The safety of hillwalkers & mountaineers argument is then being retrospectively applied.

I have now received from my MSP (still nothing from my MP) the response she received from the UK government minister (Julia Lopez, Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure). The response trots out the safety argument and also seems to argue that spending £500m on this is worth it because satellite comms is expensive...

The response does, however, indicate that my MSP is to be invited to a "roundtable discussion" on the SRN. I assume other MSPs/MPS will be as well, so the more of us who lobby them, the more likely they are to argue against these masts in "wild areas". Perhaps.

Ian: but 'wildness' is just a world expressing what people feel when they enter these landscapes.

They have a sense of awe, a slight anxiety about being so far from help, the perspective that the human race does not own the world. A perspective they take away and share, improving everyone's mental health.

In the best bits there are no sheep, which makes wild camping even better. The grouse here are wild and not hunted by Hooray Henries. (I've been a grouse beater in my youth). The deer here are not farmed, they are controlled because there are no predators.

I agree Jim. If coverage is more or less universal, like say in rural England,  it makes sense to eliminate a few notpots to get to 100% and say job done. But its just silly in the Highlands. To help the people who live in the Highlands there is an easy answer: to provide one high quality network with 100% indoor coverage of premises and roads. But Ofcom has bigger fish to fry; they talk in billions of pounds , not millions, and they see competition between networks a key to the UK economy. The interests of the people in the Highlands are a long way down their list.

Well done with the letter. Julia Lopez is responsible, but remember she didn't dream up the SRN idea and has lots of other things to deal with, about which she cannot possible know everything.

In the last Westminter debate about SRN she wondered out loud 'is handset roaming technically possible?'. So she is receptive and willing to learn.Her job is to defend earlier government decisions, and safety is the last argument standing. Or a new argument when folk found out that the SRN never bothered with a justification in the first place.

The twin track approach- a) political pressure through writing to politicians; Ofcom; press coverage etc and b) objecting to individual applications- is paying dividends.

North East Mountain Trust has, to date, objected to  29 mast applications. The current state of play is-

Active- 16

Withdrawn- 7

Approved- 5 (these are not in places we are happy about but tend to be in less contention areas)

Refused- 1

While some of the withdrawn ones are likely to be resubmitted in altered locations, the number is heartening. Withdrawals have, primarily, been because of the sheer number of public objections. THE MORE OBJECTIONS, THE MORE LIKELY A PLANNING AUTHORITY WILL TAKE NOTICE AND THE MORE A DEVELOPER WILL BE FORCED TO RECONSIDER.

We're making real progress but we must all keep the foot hard on the pedal! HEARTFELT THANKS to all who are taking action.

I don't think it's that simple. The problem is that it is not when they are at home or on a major road that people may most need their mobile phone. We do not currently have an algorithm that competently captures even an approximate risk level for that situation. 

I don't think I meant 'residents' when I said 'population'. I think I was thinking more about the potential number of users within a given area.

We can provide 100% geographic cover, at great financial and environmental cost, or we can take the approach used in most other industries of ALARP. I mean, we don't try to reduce road deaths to zero through massively restrictive measures (witness the outrage about the Welsh default 20mph), so arguing that we have to have 100% geographic cover, to deal with the vanishingly small chance that someone, some day, will need to call an emergency manicurist in a remote area seems a bit, shall we say, unconventional. Won't someone think of the children?

If Calderdale is so precious that we can't build wind turbines on it then we may as well give up on decarbonisation now and reopen the coal mines 

Some would argue the deep peat it’ll be destroying to make way for it is more important, what with it being carbon negative. Plenty of wind farms in Calderdale already.