City centre and Marsh area residents and businesses have had poor mobile signal for weeks, and I have experienced this myself whilst taking my little one to soft play and visiting shops!

Over the past month or so O2 were advising residents: “Looks like a phone mast near to you isn’t working as it should, sorry. The landlord has ongoing building work in progress and the power supply to our equipment has been disconnected.”

With no end in sight, last week I asked for urgent action to address this (see below).

City centre businesses rely on good connectivity to ensure they can operate, process payments & payroll, and serve the community, whilst consumers need to stay connected with their families and fiends and ensure they can get on with the basics like booking health appointments, banking, accessing Universal Credit journal updates, and keeping on top of all of the essential life admin.

As part of my priorities to protect our communities and assets, and support local businesses, it’s important that we have good connectivity that lets us all get on in life and grow our economy.

I’m delighted that they have updated me since to advise: “I have spoken with our network engineering team and the team has relayed that power to this site was restored on 27 May 2023 and the site is now working as it should.”

The O2 coverage map now seems much better, and I hope that people are back connected.

Obviously there is a long way to go on the road to better mobile and broadband infrastructure and connectivity across the Lancaster area, particularly in rural pockets where signal is poor, but if you are still experiencing issues please do get in touch at cat.smith.mp@parliament.uk if you think I can help, and be sure to report this to your network provider for their attention.