Summary

  • That is the wrong handoff. A tenant's request matters under the United Kingdom's access regime, particularly for flats in multi-dwelling buildings. It can trigger a route designed for an unresponsive landowner. It does not itself open the riser, confer a Code right or turn a planned installation into authorised entry.

  • The distinction is not a lawyer's ornament. It determines whether a regional provider is managing a real building-access dependency or sending field staff to discover a legal gap at the door.

The request starts a sequence

The Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021 inserted Part 4A into the Electronic Communications Code. The statutory purpose is specific. A court may impose an agreement that makes Code rights exercisable for service to leased premises where the operator needs rights over connected land and the occupier or another person with an interest in that land has not responded to repeated notices.

The tenant request is one of the conditions. The premises must be occupied under a lease. The lessee in occupation must request an electronic communications service. The operator must need a required grantor to confer, or be bound by, a Code right over connected land in order to fulfil that request. The operator must give the required grantor a request notice, and the required grantor must not respond.

Those facts establish a route into the statutory process. They do not establish its result. The operational inference is deliberately narrow: “customer requested” is evidence for the first part of the file, not evidence that the operator may enter.

Silence has to be proved, not assumed

Part 4A is aimed at non-response. The statute treats a written agreement, refusal or other written acknowledgement as a response. That matters because “the landlord has not agreed” and “the landlord has not responded” are not interchangeable states.

If the required grantor refuses in writing, the operator may have other negotiations or Code routes to consider. But it should not continue labelling the case as an unresponsive-landlord shortcut. A negative answer is still an answer for this purpose.

The notice sequence is equally concrete. Before applying for a Part 4A order, the operator must give two warning notices and a final notice. The Act sets timing rules between them. The final notice explains that, unless the required grantor responds before the end of a 14-day period, the operator intends to apply for an order. Ofcom's template-notice statement explains why prescribed notices matter: the process gives the landowner repeated opportunities to respond before a court is asked to impose time-limited rights.

A case-management screen that records only “wayleave chased” therefore loses the evidence the process needs. It should distinguish the original request notice, first warning, second warning, final notice, delivery evidence, response status and application notice. A date without the document and recipient is not a completed checkpoint.

The court order is specific

The operator may apply only after the statutory notice requirements have been met, the response period following the final notice has ended, the required grantor remains unresponsive and any other specified conditions have been satisfied. The court may make the order only if it is satisfied that the application requirements are met and the required grantor has not objected to the order.

If made, the order imposes an agreement for the Code right identified in the request notice over the connected land identified there. That wording is an important constraint. The right is not a general licence to use the building wherever engineering later finds convenient. The land, apparatus and right sought have to remain joined.

The Act also makes the right temporary. Part 4A rights end under the statutory conditions and the period specified by regulations cannot exceed 18 months. The route can unlock installation while the parties move toward a replacement agreement, but temporary authority should not be stored in an asset system as if it were an indefinite property right.

This is where a small operator can create a long-lived liability from a short-lived permission. The build record survives. Staff change. The property changes hands. Maintenance is needed. If the record keeps the fibre route but loses the agreement, order, scope and expiry, the network team inherits apparatus without a reliable statement of the right supporting access to it.

Sources

  1. UK Parliament, Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act 2021.
  2. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, Regulations to implement the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act: government response.
  3. Ofcom, Statement on template notices resulting from the 2021 Act amendments to the Code.
  4. Ofcom, Electronic Communications Code: rights and obligations.
  5. UK Parliament, The Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) (Terms of Agreement) Regulations 2022.
  6. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Guidance on access agreements.