Green box placed where kerb is to be dropped

Telecoms cabinets are usually installed under “permitted development” rights (Town and Country Planning legislation). So, no planning permission is needed but councils do have oversight including approval of siting, access and safety.

A proper written approval for a dropped kerb (vehicle crossover) includes a designated location and a timeframe typically 6-12 months to complete the works. If your approval in within the timeframe and the cabinet blocks the designated location, then the council has fouled up. This is what you get when Highways Department (which approves dropped kerbs) is not in sync with Street Works Department (which signs off telecom cabinet locations) as they each have their own recording systems which rarely talk to each other. Not one council in this land has a single, unified database which has all the data, so manual cross‑checking has to be done - which is error-prone.

So what happens next? In practice, councils almost always change the dropped‑kerb plan or refund the application cost rather than forcing a change to the location of a live cabinet which can incur significant costs and disruption to many customers.

Thanks for this really helpful - I am within in the planning period for the works to be carried out.  I don’t seem to be able to add pictures…. 

If the cabinet is in-situ, I very much doubt there will be any plans to move it. It's not unusual for planning consents to include clauses requiring development to start within x months/years of approval. If that's the case here, and one council department hasn't co-ordinated with another, it may turn out to be a case of first-come first-served.

Can you post up some photos? That may help.

you need to talk to the council - the box would only have been placed there with permission of the council so sounds like 2 depts have not been talking to each other