We have been supporting Blackpool Council in securing a wayleave agreement with a cooperative whose membership is made up of many of the main broadband providers. The basis of the agreement is that ducts and access should be shared between the providers per the governance of the cooperative.
There were differing views within the council on how this should work and we helped their legal team navigate these, with a view to achieving the simplest route to working with sites across the borough, being a mixture of social housing and commercial properties.
We drew on our previous experience of work undertaken on large infrastructure projects such as HS2. The summary of the arrangement is available here.
The wayleave agreement deals with the apportionment of risk on the basis that the cooperative is able to deliver value for money by brokering the arrangements with the providers, who can offer good pricing through not being in competition with each other. A key aim is to open access to digital infrastructure to people who would otherwise be unable to bridge the gap that more prosperous households take for granted.
