Strange question

[Leehebrides]

A bit of a strange question, but I dont know where else to ask, I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this problem please.

I live above our old shop on the Outer Hebrides, the shop in days gone by was the local telegraph/phone exchange for the island, this of course has been closed for many years, however I was chatting to an Open reach engineer who was servicing the phone box outside the shop, and he asked me if he could come inside as he could not find where power for the box came from what he could gather the power is being drawn from my own electricity supply.

As you can imagine, I don't want to be paying for the electricity to the box, but appear to have been for the last twenty years at least,  So does anyone any ideas how I can check this or who to contact, I understand open reach/BT are notoriously difficult to speak to.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@Leehebrides 

This thread has some info about payphones, and a contact number.

https://community.bt.com/t5/Archive-Staging/The-BT-Payphone-thread/m-p/1989899

I would imagine its a separate protected feed, separate from your domestic supply.

I assume the shop has its own feed.

[Leehebrides]

This is the Hebrides, they do things in their own way here,☺️. The shop is on the same supply as the flat built over the top of it, the original building underneath is a stone built croft house with just one electrify feed coming in.     Thankyou for the links

[licquorice]

Bear in mind the only power being consumed would be for the light. There is no mains powered equipment installed in a phone box. Therefore consumption would be minimal. 

[iniltous]

If you have a consumer unit , switch off power into your home , if the phone box light ( assuming it has a light ) doesn’t work then it’s possible that the phone box was never given its own supply, if it’s not illuminated on an evening, then as stated the equipment in the phone box may well be powered by the 50v exchange battery , wherever the exchange now is , but that would beg the question, what was the engineer looking for .

[Starman]

I work for a DNO supplies for Telephone Box Kiosks are typically unmetered and pro-rata typical usage over a year similar to how street lights are paid for - you might have better luck contacting the islands DNO to confirm running arrangements. If you had a photo of the cut out and metering intake in the shop I might be able to confirm.

[Leehebrides]

That is good of you I will photo it in the morning. What is a DNO please