BT faces calls to smarten up '˜scruffy' Bognor Regis town gateway

The town council members want BT to smarten up its telephone exchange and the surrounding grassed area in Gloucester Road.

The telecoms company has told Arun District Council it has no plans to allow the land to be made available for other users.

But town councillor Roger Nash told Monday’s meeting it was unacceptable for such an important site to be left in a condition which let down its surroundings.

His suggestion that the issue was referred back to the council’s policy and resources committee to enable the situation to be monitored.

“We seem to be getting no further forward on this issue,” he said.

“This is one of the gateways into the town.

“Butlin’s have spent a lot of money on their site on the opposite side of the road and it looks good.

“But you look at the BT site and it’s appalling.

“It’s quite overgrown at the moment.

“We have to look as a town council one way or another how to solve that problem.”

Fellow councillor Kim Davis said a meeting about the site had been held with Anthony Everitt, Arun’s economic regeneration officer.

Arun has earmarked the spare land around the exchange as a car park to replace the spaces lost next to the seafront if its hoped-for watersports centre goes ahead.

She agreed work needed to be carried out at the telephone exchange in the short term to tidy it up because the plans for the car park were for the long term.