Hospital counts costs of phone mast rental rule change
THE hospital trust in Boris Johnson’s constituency is losing out on hundreds of thousands of pounds of rent from mobile companies after a government law change.
The Hillingdon NHS Trust had to repay Vodafone more than £300,000 at the height of the pandemic after losing a legal dispute over the income the telecoms giant pays to host mobile equipment at its hospital sites.
The reduction comes after ministers rewrote the Electronic Communications Code in 2017 to allow mobile companies to renegotiate the rents they pay to host masts and other telecoms equipment.
Campaigners say the changes have seen thousands of community organisations such as churches and sports clubs have their income from such agreements cut. Meanwhile, the mobile industry has argued the changes are helping speed up the rollout of the nextgeneration 5G mobile signal and improve coverage for customers.
However, The Sunday Telegraph has found that hospitals are also losing out because of the changes. Latest accounts for the trust show that the rental income it made from hosting Vodafone equipment has been cut by 89 per cent, causing it to drop the valuation of its rental assets from £1.9million to just £211,000. The trust records also show that it had to pay Vodafone £330,000 after a court battle over a new rental agreement was settled in November 2020.
Vodafone said that it started renegotiating its rental agreement with the Hillingdon NHS Trust in 2016 but that the case went to a tribunal in 2019 after neither side could reach an agreement.
A spokesman for the company said: “We were reimbursed last year for overpaid rent, but conversations with the Hillingdon Trust began in 2016, long before the pandemic started.
“We have been overpaying rent since 2016, and the trust recognised that in the new agreement. As part of the new agreement, we have removed a lot of equipment from the site, freeing up space for the trust to attract rental income from other providers.”
The Hillingdon NHS Trust declined to comment on the dispute.
Meanwhile, a group that campaigns against the new reduced rental agreements, Protect and Connect, said that the money the trust paid Vodafone during the pandemic could have paid for the salaries of 10 nurses for a year. It also warned against legislation currently going through Parliament that would make it harder for people to challenge reduced rental agreements in court.
Anna Turley, the chairman of Protect and Connect, said: “The Government has already handed phone companies £500million of public money to pay for [the 5G rollout], and now wants to change the law to make it even easier for mobile companies to pay less rent. This will hit thousands of small site owners – including community centres, social clubs, sports clubs and charities as well as hospitals – who are now being asked to foot the bill for the digital rollout the telecoms industry has failed to deliver.” The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (PSTI), which will encourage people and organisations disputing reduced rental agreements to go to arbitration rather than court, was heavily criticised by MPs during its second parliamentary reading last month. Among the critics was Desmond Swayne, the Conservative MP.
He said: “It’s no wonder that the whole rollout has stalled and no one wants to give access to a mast because the income isn’t worth it and the consequences are frankly deplorable.”
However, the internet rollout campaign group Speed Up Britain said PSTI was aiming to provide landlords with “clarity” on the new rental agreements with telecoms companies.