How do you report a dangerous situation / damage to overhead cables to Openreach

[Mark_T1]

How do you report a dangerous situation / damage to overhead cables to Openreach, when it's not at your own property?

At the weekend I came across a large fallen tree that was in a dangerous position across a road. the tree was being held up by the overhead phone cables, but cars were still passing underneath. Lorries and larger vans would not have been able to pass. 

As the tree was in a dangerous position and likely to fall given the continued winds, I tried to report it to the Police and Highways. I was told I needed to report it to Openreach. I therefore called 0800 023 2023. Unfortunately the agent was unable to log the report because I couldn't provide him with a full Post Code. I tried offering him the road name and location, and even What3Words, but he was unable to use any of this - he couldn't access What3Words.com. I tried giving my postcode to allow him to move to the next stage of the report, but I was then asked my about my property - which wasn't where the issue was.

In the end we had no alternative but to give up. He was trying to be helpful, but his systems didn't allow him to log the problem. And not having access to the Internet meant he couldn't up-to-date tools for pin pointing a location.

Please can the Openreach Support teams be given access to What3Words and / or the ability to log an incident without a post code?

[gg30340]

If it was a danger to road users the Police and the Highways should have dealt with it and not passed the buck to you.

In any event this forum has nothing to do with Openreach which is a separate company from BT Retail.

You could try using this link to see if there is any thing that might assist you.

 https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/damage-health-and-safety

[Mark_T1]

Hi, yes my thoughts too. I spoke to the Highways out of hours support and they said they couldn't touch it unless the tree was on the road. They said they weren't able to touch anything that was in contact with a cable, unless Openreach was present and deemed it to be safe.

Sorry, I knew this was probably the wrong group, but as Openreach don't seem to have a feedback form, forum, email address or WhatsApp, then I thought there might be a small chance someone from Openreach Ltd. might see it here. Totally understand that the CP's including BT Retail operate entirely separately.  

[jac_95]

@Mark_T1 

It can be reported via the chat bot on https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/damage-health-and-safety

As shown in image below

 

[Mark_T1]

Thank you @jac_95 .
I too discovered this, this afternoon. What is interesting is that it even suggests you can provide What3Words 👍

Sadly, the poor Openreach agent I spoke to on the phone did not have access to any tools like this, he wasn’t sure what What3Words was, nor did he have access to the Internet.

What is good is that Openreach clearly recognise the value that these tools provide. Hopefully they will make them available to their phone based agents at some point.

Extract from Openreach website:

• Report damage: Outages can happen because trees or branches hit our cables and equipment. You can help us fix things faster by reporting this kind of issue directly to us online. Use a What3Words location to help us pinpoint the damage.

Anyway, all good. Thanks for the responses.