City if York Council has confirmed that TalkTalk will not be able to install Ultra Fibre Optic cable on Middlethorpe Grove until September 2021 at the earliest.

Within legislation the council can protect recently resurfaced roads and footpaths, such as those on Middlethorpe Grove, with what is referred to as a Section 58 notice. It serves a two-fold purpose – to prevent the street from being dug up within a short period after being resurfaced or reconstructed, and to avoid repetitive disruption of traffic by works being carried out in the street.

Local authorities do have a degree of discretion in how they enforce Section 58, for example they can waive protection if the street only has a month or two before the period was about to expire. Middlethorpe Grove has a ‘live’ Section 58 in place until September 2021. The council was not willing to waive the Section 58 on Middlethorpe Grove so soon after the work had been done, though it did provide notice to TalkTalk in advance that they would need to build ahead of the impending refurbishment schemes or risk a ‘lock out’ of these areas.

We understand that TalkTalk chose not to build ahead of the refurbishment and therefore cannot proceed with work to install UFO on Middlethorpe Grove at the present time.

What we don’t yet know is when (and if) TalkTalk will return to do the installation work after September 2021.