A TOTAL of 16 iconic red public telephone boxes serving some of Exmoor’s most remote areas could be removed unless they are adopted by local communities, British Telecom warned this week.

A 90-day consultation period ends on December 21 when BT will make a decision on the fate of the phone boxes – most have been part of the moorland landscape for over 80 years.

This week there was mounting opposition to losing the boxes, led by the Exmoor National Park Authority.

At its meeting last Tuesday, the authority made a formal objection to the removal of 12 of the payphones after being told that they still provided a valued and much-needed service.

A BT spokesman said that overall use of payphones had fallen by 90 per cent in the last decade and the consultation process gave communities the chance to “adopt” a red phonebox for just £1 and make it into an asset local people could enjoy.

At Tuesday’s meeting, David Wyborn, head of planning and sustainable development, recommended objections to 12 of the proposed closures.

He told park authority members that there was very patchy mobile coverage in the national park. Some of the phone boxes were in remote locations and were the only means of making a phone call.

“Many disadvantaged and vulnerable consumers rely on telephone boxes,” he said.

“They provide a service that is valued and needed by many people who do not have a telephone and those away from home who cannot, for whatever reason, use their mobile phone.”

He said it was also important that a public phonebox network was available to walkers using the park’s 1,000 km of rights-of-way and maintained for emergency and other important calls.