After a number of months of disruption and complaints, the Virgin installation works are coming to an end and we expect Virgin to be fully out of the village this side of Christmas.

We fully understand that for some residents, the presence of the Virgin works has been terrible and we have tried to help resolve these whenever we can. The following aims to give some clear information in response to the number of email and social media questions being asked of us.

Getting the service

Where the pavement has been dug up outside your house, then the service is now ‘live’ and available. If you’ve registered with ‘cable my street’ then you should have already received a call or visit, or will do in the very near future. If not, and you want to get contact details, then please email us.

Louise spoke to one of the installation team when he was out in the village.  He has confirmed that, due to the scale of disruption, they are waiving the installation charge (usually £40) for Kirkliston residents. Now, we are not suggesting this gesture makes up for the disruption – just passing on the information. And again, for those of you who have asked us, it’s about £30 a month for phone and broadband and you can get up to 100mbps.

‘New build’ – non adopted roads

There are some areas in the village where Virgin will not be available.  We wanted to update you on that as it has come up a number of times over the last month, and has not been well communicated by Virgin.

In short, if your road has not yet been adopted by the Council, then Virgin will not come in and lay cables. To do so, they need the landowners permission (e.g. Barratts, Millers etc) and those Developers won’t give permission unless they have assurances  the disrupted footpath won’t negatively impact on their road adoption request.

The default position with the Council’s Road Adoption team is that any ‘altered’ pavement, needs to be fully re-tarmaced. That of course is a hefty cost for the developer or for Virgin. Louise has been exchanging a large number of emails around these different interested parties, trying to get some agreement and concession, and while some areas are possible, others are not. So here’s a rundown of what we know:

• Catelbock Close (off Burnshot) – not yet adopted due to lack of agreement between Cala and Council. No agreement for Virgin to disrupt the pavements so no service.
• Buie’s (opp leisure centre) – again, not yet adopted and as we understand it there is some level of dispute between Council and Developer so it’s not close to adoption. As above, Virgin are therefore not providing the service.
• Catstane (off Housefield) – very new housing, and road adoption won’t start until 2 years after the last house is built. So no Virgin service.
• Maudes & Todshaugh (off Kirkland) – again, due to the recency of the housing, road adoption won’t start for some time, and both sides of Kirklands are affected. No Virgin service.
• Eilstons (off Eilston Rd) – road is very close to adoption and likely to happen within weeks to only a few months. I’ve encouraged discussion between the Council, Developer and Virgin to see if a compromise regarding permission can be found to allow works to be done before Virgin leave. I don’t have resolution yet but will advise via Facebook group.

For these areas, we have asked about when they could likely expect an extension of the network to be included, once road adoptions are resolved.

Frustratingly Virgin won’t give any guarantees and it would be unlikely to be during 2018 due to the advance planning of what communities they go into. However, if a number of these neighbourhoods were to become ‘available’ then collectively it could warrant a return visit of the installation team.

We will keep local people posted.