The introduction of the revised Electronic Communications Code was supposed to dramatically improve the situation created by its poorly conceived predecessor. Almost 12 months in and despite the opportunity for both sides to be sensible and expedite a faster a fairer regime, landowners and operators remain locked in a stalemate with the potential to jam the system up for years.

Whilst the majority of landowners seem accepting that telecoms rents will be coming down to facilitate the roll out of 5G, some operators are maintaining that rents should fall to the bare minimum required for the rights granted – something akin to or lower than rates paid by other infrastructure operators such as National Grid and DNO’s.

In matters of valuation for compensation each site should be looked at on its individual circumstances. In such a subjective area many individual cases may need to be decided by the lands tribunal in order to create the broad level of precedents that may be required to answer every possible scenario.

The RICS recently published an article highlighting the position which can be found here.