Gigaclear abandoned rollout owing to "third party landowner"

Gigaclear dug up our semi-rural lane last year. Almost all houses had pots installed and the service is available to order for those houses. Except... our cottage is one of about twenty or so at the far end of the lane that they stopped short of when digging their main trench. They did not install pots at our houses and, instead, dug various links between existing Openreach chambers, so various bits of road between these twenty houses were dug up, but not as part of the contiguous trench. We were led to believe they would be utilising Openreach infra (ducts and poles via PIA, presumably) to provide service to us.

Now, many months later and after lots of chasing, they have replied to me to say that "Unfortunately we are unable to carry on with the works as a third party landowner is preventing us from continuing the build phase."

They're citing GDPR (of course) as the reason they can't tell me who this mystery landowner is. It's somewhat perplexing as the only land I can imagine they need access to is the road itself, which is a normal country lane. There is National Trust common land around here and it's possible they own some of the road, so perhaps they're the landlord in question but who knows.

Has anybody else experienced this before? It seems odd that Gigaclear would go to all the expense of digging trenches between various bits of Openreach infrastructure and then abandon it all!

I think that citing GDPR as a reason not to tell you who this mystery Landowner is is simultaneously a cop out and a not unreasonable application of GDPR. which is paradoxical.

You are asking the wrong question. You should be asking where is Gigaclear's nearest point of access and what land can they not cross. If the land is registered, the owner is in the public domain anyway. I would be looking at squeezing that information out of them. After all, they must have found an owner to knock them back. And if they can find an owner, so can you.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

IYou should be asking where is Gigaclear's nearest point of access and what land can they not cross.

Good point. I've now asked.

Given where they stopped digging the main trench I suspect it could be a small parcel owned by the National Trust. If so, there are at least two other routes I can think of that could work (with some cooperation from two or three neighbours, which I think I could secure), but let's see.

Does anybody have experience of fibre build-outs reaching this point and then becoming seemingly blocked? Am I beating a dead horse in trying to get it resolved? Or are there other examples of Gigaclear (or their equivalents) being persuaded to take another look? If so, what has tipped the balance? eg is this the kind of thing a local councillor can be helpful with?

In reply to a post by karabo:

Given where they stopped digging the main trench I suspect it could be a small parcel owned by the National Trust. If so, there are at least two other routes I can think of that could work (with some cooperation from two or three neighbours, which I think I could secure), but let's see.

Does anybody have experience of fibre build-outs reaching this point and then becoming seemingly blocked? Am I beating a dead horse in trying to get it resolved? Or are there other examples of Gigaclear (or their equivalents) being persuaded to take another look? If so, what has tipped the balance? eg is this the kind of thing a local councillor can be helpful with?

You are probably getting ahead of yourself thinking of councillors - at this point just try and get the information on what the problem is. Depending on the councillor, getting them involved when the solution might be crossing neighbours land could cause more problems eg neighbour does not like councillor's politics. If the problem is that Gigaclear are still hiding behind data protection, the councillor may come in handy to get the information, but you need to have your ducks in a line for how you are going to follow through to a solution.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

You are probably getting ahead of yourself thinking of councillors - at this point just try and get the information on what the problem is. Depending on the councillor, getting them involved when the solution might be crossing neighbours land could cause more problems eg neighbour does not like councillor's politics. If the problem is that Gigaclear are still hiding behind data protection, the councillor may come in handy to get the information, but you need to have your ducks in a line for how you are going to follow through to a solution.

Also you may have councillors or MP not of the proactive kind which won't help. We don't know what the geographical area is like and there for input is limited.

If the national trust land can be avoided do so. Also its maybe worth contacting them to see what they say, but you then have Natural England to deal with too ..

Any member of the public can also make an enquiry to the Land Registry to find out who owns a piece of land. It looks to be a bit slow. (Note that the early google responses are aimed at businesses, presumably due to frequency of being clicked. General public info a few results down).

It looks like there could be a fee.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

It looks like there could be a fee.

a very small fee

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Any member of the public can also make an enquiry to the Land Registry to find out who owns a piece of land. It looks to be a bit slow. (Note that the early google responses are aimed at businesses, presumably due to frequency of being clicked. General public info a few results down).

It looks like there could be a fee.

The link I would use https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/land-reg... - the fee is

The main thing to beware of is not so much the links aimed at businesses - eg solicitors surveyors and estate agents - more the commercial sites which access the same information as you get from the gov.uk site and charge a premium on top of the regular price.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Any member of the public can also make an enquiry to the Land Registry to find out who owns a piece of land.

Thanks - yep... looks like I asked the wrong question up front (and triggered the GDPR excuse unnecessarily). If I knew *which* piece of land was the issue then, as you say, I could very easily find out who owns it. What I don't yet know is which piece of land it is.

Quoting you:"Given where they stopped digging the main trench I suspect it could be a small parcel owned by the National Trust" .