Mobile phone companies urged to help keep Shropshire's phone boxes on the streets

BT is responsible for 460 of phone boxes across Shropshire and its borders.

But most of them lose money and now BT has proposed getting rid of the 75 that cost the most to maintain and are least used.

But the idea has met with objections from parish councils who say the kiosks are still a lifeline in an emergency, particularly in the countryside where mobile phone signals are patchy and sometime non-existent.

One parish council, Weston Rhyn near Oswestry, is fighting plans to close two phone boxes – one in the village, the other in the nearby hamlet of Chirk Bank.

Council chairman, Ralph Cooper said that with the phone boxes close to the well-used Llangollen Canal and a World Heritage Site, they could prove vital to the thousands of visitors who visit the canal each year.

It was a skilful job working out how to use the payphone with its Press Button A and Press Button B instructions.

You always had to ensure you had a pocket full of change. And when those infernal pips went, it was always a scramble to feed more money into the coin box.

And then there was that certain smell of a phone box – a mixture of stale cigarette smoke, phone books and the unsavoury whiff of pee!

My first phone memories are from 1969. I was eight, we lived in Glasgow and, like most people, didn't have phone at home.

Every Sunday (it was cheaper to ring on a Sunday) the entire family would cram into to the phone box across the road and my parents would ring my grandparents back in Shropshire. My little brother would sit on the phone directory shelf and we would take it in turns to talk.

As a young reporter in Shropshire I soon learnt where phone boxes were across the county so I could send my stories in as soon as possible. Although, with mobile phone coverage as patchy as it is in Shropshire, I can still sometimes be found sending "copy" in to the paper from a call box – and trying to remember how to use it!

And Charles Roberts, who lives just a few hundred yards from the phone box in Knockin, said that in a rural area public kiosks were vital.

"Not everyone has a mobile phone and in Shropshire the signal in many areas is patchy at best," he said.

"They may not be used very often but when they are it is often in an emergency. They can save a life."

But BT has pointed out that of the 75 at-risk phone boxes fewer than 10 calls were made from 60 of them in the 12 months prior to October 2014. It says on average around only 230 calls are made from phone boxes in Shropshire annually. Yet is has to cover the cost of their upkeep and repairs.

Crime, such as theft and vandalism costs almost £5.2 million a year. Last year BT replaced more than 15,000 panes of glass in kiosks and more than 18,000 payphone handsets.

Nationally, BT has a duty to provide a reasonable number of working phone boxes where they are most needed.

Emma Tennant, from BT, said: "BT would be in favour of all phone companies contributing to a fund to ensure the payphone network can be maintained for the people who depend on them."

With the rise in the use of mobile phones calls from BT payphones have fallen by more than 80 per cent in the last five years.

This is despite BT introducing ideas to help phone boxes pay their way, including advertising on kiosks and combining wi-fi and cash machines with payphones.

To try and keep the traditional red phone boxes in Britain, BT introduced its Adopt a Kiosk scheme in 2008. This allows a community to retain their local red BT phone box, with the payphone taken out, by buying the kiosk from the company for just £1.

More than 2,200 kiosks have been adopted in the UK,. Boxes have been turned into defibrillator kiosks, art galleries, libraries and information centres.