Herefordshire Council has been in touch with Ross Town Council regarding the removal of two telephone boxes in Ross-on-Wye, one in The Avenue, and one on Walford Road. The Avenue telephone box had one call made from it in last 12 months, while the Walford Road telephone box had 24 made.

Ross Town Councillors considered the Council’s formal response to the proposals by BT for both of the removals on Monday, September 9th.

County and town councillor, Paul Symonds, said that although he felt reluctant to remove any kind of community facility, there was not a “robust case to retain them” in this case.

Councillor Julian Utting was reluctant to to approve the removal of the telephone boxes until the Town Council were aware how many emergency service calls had been made using them, but the Mayor said that Herefordshire Council had requested a decision by Tuesday, September 10th. Information regarding the amount of emergency service calls made was not given to the Town Council, Councillor Roberts said.

A proposal was put forward by Councillor Chris Bartrum, in which he said the Town Council should “accept the inevitable”. His proposal to allow the removal and to make enquiries about adopting the boxes was amended by Councillor Utting, who said the Town Council should allow the removal of The Avenue’s telephone box but delay the decision regarding Walford Road’s telephone box until the Council received a breakdown regarding the number of emergency calls made from it.

The Mayor confirmed that the Town Council were voting to accept the removal of both telephone boxes with a proviso about emergency calls made, before committing to investigating the potential adoption of the telephone boxes.

Ross Town Council voted to decommission the telephone boxes, as put forward by Councillor Bartrum’s motion, before voting to ask the Council’s amenities committee to investigate the array of potential uses that could be found for Ross-on-Wye’s resulting redundant telephone boxes.See the full story in this week’s edition of the Ross Gazette, or subscribe to our online edition here