Vodafone Mast in Lancaster to go Permanently Offline - Cat Smith

2nd April, 2026

For the past year I have been challenging Vodafone and O2 to fix a broken phone mast in Lancaster.

The mast, atop a derelict building on Fenton Street in the centre of Lancaster is operated by Vodafone, in a site sharing agreement with along with Virgin Media O2.

I have secured thousands of pounds in compensation for residents and businesses through my website complaint forms, pushed Vodafone on the installation of jail gates, tasked Lancashire Police to upgrade their patrols around the site, and worked with city council officers to take action against the building owner to secure and board up openings.

Sadly, antisocial behaviour and vandalism at the building has persisted, including weapons found at the site by Vodafone engineers. As a result, Vodafone have updated me today to advise:

I regret to inform you that the decision has been taken to deem this site non-viable and therefore a replacement site will need to be found – we appreciate this will be deeply frustrating for yourself and your constituents.

Our estates team are now assessing viable alternative sites. To manage expectations, this is not a short process and will likely take 12 -36 months to deliver. This includes finding a new location, planning permission, potentially a building safety application to the building safety regulator and then construction.

As we know, this is having a huge impact in Lancaster’s town centre so we would hope there would be limited opposition during the planning process which can often be where we experience the longest delays. Once we have some more detail, we would of course be keen to work with you on this to ensure we can get the new site through the planning system as soon as possible.

Just last week the Government announced their Mobile Market Review and call for evidence as part of a commitment for all populated areas to have access to higher quality standalone 5G by 2030. If the government is to meet this target, we need to fix poor signal in our city here in Lancaster.

Although our mobile phone infrastructure is privatised, usually with agreements with owners of privately-owned buildings, I have contacted the city council to ask for their support in sourcing potential new sites, and have written to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology to ask for their proactive intervention and to ask how we can ensure that planning delays do not get in the way of restoring mobile phone signal in the city.

Read my letter to the Secretary of State below: