When BT announced it wanted to remove the two remaining phone boxes in Fulbourn village I didn’t see it as inevitable believing that one of them was needed.

Fortunately BT wrongly described the phone box I wanted to keep in Cambridge Road Fulbourn so I forced BT to re-run its consultation on it and used the extra time this gave to put together a case using BT’s own criteria for keeping it.

It has an above usage for a rural phone box, serves social housing with a high proportion of elderly people, is on a main road adjacent to a bus stop and close to two heavy used junctions where there have been accidents.

I put this to South Cambs; it agreed with me and together with the support of the parish council it has now objected to the removal of the phone box.

There are times when we forget our mobile phone or its battery goes flat or its gets stolen. And there are people particularly the elderly who do not have a mobile.

Public phone boxes are a social service – that doesn’t mean we need one on every street corner but having one to hand that’s accessible 24/7 just in case for that emergency is essential.