POLITICS: Digital Voice system could bring new year headaches to many rural households
The year ahead is going to bring some changes for rural Aberdeenshire in terms of digital connectivity, writes Aberdeenshire North and Moray East MP Seamus Logan.
With the Radio Teleswitch Signal shut down and required meter upgrades, and the roll out of BT’s new home phone service, Digital Voice, rural constituents may be concerned that these major transitions could bring disruption to their heating and phone services.
The RTS switch off deadline is June 30, 2025, when any constituent still using a meter with a RTS signal may experience issues with their heating and hot water. Customers are being asked to switch to smart meters before this deadline with Energy UK, the trade body for energy suppliers, warning electric only customers of higher bills if they do not sign up to this process.
Given there are around 3000 households in my constituency that this decommissioning will affect, I have called on the government to provide as much clarity and reassurance that this roll out will be fair for rural communities that have little trust in smart meters working properly in areas where the signal is poor. I want to reassure constituents that they can contact my office with any queries on this matter, as well as finding out more on the RTS website, and that I intend to maintain pressure on the government to this end.
Signal issues also relate to the roll out of BT’s Digital Voice, with constituents worried that they may have no landline in the case of power cuts or storm damage as a result as well as issues with using their mobile phone in case of emergency. BT are keen to reassure these customers that they will be supplied with a battery back-up unit and hybrid phone to enable calls during a power outage as well as their commitment to keep working with the government and power networks to increase resilience in local networks.
Customers without broadband are to be provided with an interim dedicated landline service to keep them connected during this migration. Once again, please contact my office if you have any concerns with this transition.
Meanwhile, back at Westminster, I will be returning to my seat on the green benches to continue the fight for WASPI women who have been so badly let down by both Tory and Labour Governments with the incredibly callous decision not to compensate them for the maladministration by the DWP in alerting them to changes in the state pension age. Quite what the future holds for independent inquiry bodies like the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman, who advised the UK government to bring about swift compensation for these women is anyone’s guess given their recommendations have been roundly ignored.
Of course, in an ideal world, when governments get it wrong, which they regularly do, whatever their colour, they should really hold up their hands, admit their failure and change course. Never was this truer than in the case of Labour’s incompetence on their budget changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Inheritance Tax that have so badly affected farming communities across my constituency and the length and breadth of the country.
In an emotional and heartfelt committee session before Christmas with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and witnesses including the President of the National Farming Union, Tom Bradshaw, the tragic personal cost of these ill-thought-out reforms were laid bare to Ministers and cross-party colleagues. With Scottish family farms already stretched to breaking point after a decade of tightening margins, input cost inflation and extreme weather events, reforms to APR and IHT are the last straw.
If the UK government think these two issues, among many, many others, will have dissipated over the festive holidays, I think they might be due a rather rude new year awakening when we return this month to Westminster.
