NHS trusts Boris Johnson constituency losing rent from mobile companies after legal change

Boris Johnson’s constituency hospital trust is losing hundreds of thousands of pounds in rent from mobile phone companies after a government legal change.

Hillingdon NHS Trust had to pay Vodafone more than £300,000 in backdated rent at the height of the pandemic after losing a dispute over the revenue the telecoms giant pays to house mobile equipment at its hospital sites.

The cut comes after ministers rewrote the Electronic Communications Code in 2017 to allow mobile companies to renegotiate the rents they pay to house masts and other telecommunications equipment.

Campaigners say the changes have seen thousands of community organizations such as churches and sports clubs see their income from the deals cut.

Meanwhile, the mobile industry has argued that the changes help speed up the rollout of next-generation 5G mobile signal and improve coverage for customers.

Hospitals are losers

However, the Telegraph found that hospitals are also losing out from the changes.

The latest Hillingdon NHS Trust accounts show that rental income generated from hosting Vodafone equipment has been reduced by 89%, leading to a fall in the valuation of its rental assets from £1.9million to just £211,000.

Trust records also show he had to pay Vodafone £330,000 after a court battle over a new tenancy agreement was settled in November 2020.

Vodafone told the Telegraph it started renegotiating its rental agreement with Hillingdon NHS Trust in 2016, but the matter went to court in 2019 after neither party could reach an agreement .

A company spokesperson said: ‘We were reimbursed last year for overpaid rent, but conversations with the Hillingdon Trust began in 2016, well before the pandemic began.

“We have been paying too much rent since 2016, and the Trust has recognized this in the new agreement. As part of the new agreement, we have removed a lot of equipment from the site, freeing up space for the Trust to attract rental income from other providers. »

Hillingdon NHS Trust declined to comment on the dispute.

Agreements harder to challenge

Meanwhile, a group campaigning against new reduced tenancies, Protect and Connect, said the money the trust paid to Vodafone during the pandemic could have paid the salaries of 10 nurses for a year.

He also warned of new legislation now going through parliament that would make it harder for people to challenge discounted tenancies in court.

Anna Turley, chair of the Protect and Connect campaign, said: “The government has already given the phone companies £500m of public money to pay [the 5G rollout]and now wants to change the law to allow cellphone companies to pay even less rent.

“This will affect thousands of small site owners – including community centres, social clubs, sports clubs and charities as well as hospitals – who are now being asked to foot the bill for the digital rollout that the internet industry telecommunications failed to provide.”

The Product Safety and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) Bill, which will encourage people and organizations challenging discounted tenancies to go to arbitration rather than the courts, has been heavily criticized by MPs during its second parliamentary reading last month.

Among the critics was Tory MP Desmond Swayne, who warned that constant tenancy disputes could block the rollout of the faster 5G mobile signal.