Broadband for flats: why your block shows as covered and you still cannot order, who has to sign, and how to find them today

The short version, and the sentence nobody quotes

Direct answer: In a great many blocks the fibre is already at the door. What is missing is a signature, not an engineer.

Almost everything written about broadband in flats starts from the assumption that a block is harder to build to than a house. It is not, particularly. A flat is not harder to connect than a house. It is harder to get permission for, and those are different problems with different solutions.

Around a million UK homes are in exactly that position, and the number is not ours: “Openreach estimates the law change could unlock many of the estimated one million premises in UK flats or sub-divided houses where it has built Full Fibre to the door but hasn't been able to gain access.” On its policy pages the same operator is blunter about the cause: “Openreach is currently unable to reach hundreds of thousands of flats across the UK. This is because we are unable to secure the permissions required from landlords.” Not cost. Not distance. Not engineering. Permissions.

And nexfibre, a completely separate operator with no reason to agree, says the same thing independently: “gaining permissions from landlords or property owners is difficult and lengthy, making it challenging to upgrade from existing copper infrastructure, particularly in relation to multi-dwelling units (MDUs).” Then it describes what that does to the maps everybody relies on: “While this creates a facade of national-scale coverage, the reality is more like 'swiss-cheese', leaving many properties disconnected and left behind”

So here is the whole page in four lines. The fibre is often already there. One signature is missing. It costs the building nothing and it does not need your neighbours. And the person who has to sign is usually on a public register you can search in the next ten minutes.

If you rent the flat, everything here applies to you as it does to an owner, and there is a second permission that does not: our renters guide covers what your own landlord has a say in. If a line already works and you simply want a different company, that is a different question with a cheerful answer on the switching guide.

Why the map says yes and the checker says no

Direct answer: Both are telling the truth. A coverage map reports where the network has been built. An availability checker reports what can be sold to your door. In a block those are two different questions.

This is the experience that brings most people to a page like this one, and it is maddening precisely because both halves look like errors. Your street is inside the coloured area. Your address returns nothing. Somebody on a phone line tells you it is not available at your property, which is true and explains nothing at all.

What has happened is that the build reached the building and stopped, and then nothing happened for a very long time. It is not rare and it is not your block being singled out. In London alone: “More than 600,000 flats and apartments in London could miss out on a vital Full Fibre broadband upgrade”. The UK figure, quoted at the top of this page, is around a million premises already built to.

The useful consequence is that a no from a checker is not a verdict on your building. It is a verdict on one operator's permission to enter it, today. Which means the thing to do next is not to give up on the block, and it is not to wait for the map to change. It is to find out who has to sign.

Find who holds the pen, and write to them

Direct answer: Find out who the freeholder or managing agent is, and give their details to the operator. That one act is what the whole thing waits on.

Openreach's own resident form asks for one thing and it is not a survey or a petition: “Use this form to provide freeholder or managing agent details so we can ask for permission to install Full Fibre in your building.” A contact. And then nobody tells you where to get one, which is the gap this fills.

The finder runs entirely in your browser. There is no form to submit, no address sent to any server and nothing stored: what you type is assembled on this page and gone when you close the tab. Every quoted line in the letter is an operator's own published wording, including the awkward ones, so a freeholder who checks it will find it says exactly what you said it says.

The one sentence that explains all of it

Direct answer: The agreement that lets an operator into your communal areas to mend the old copper does not let them install fibre. That one sentence explains most of this page.

Here it is in Openreach's own words, from its news page: “Right now, Openreach can use its existing wayleave agreements to enter communal areas in flats and repair its older copper network, but it can't use the same rights to install the latest technology.” And again on its policy hub, phrased by the business rather than the press office: “Currently, we use our existing access rights - or wayleaves - to access communal areas in flats to repair the copper network, but we cannot use those same rights to upgrade tenants to the latest technology.”

Read that twice, because it is not a technicality and almost nobody quotes it. An engineer can already walk into your communal areas. They do it when the old copper breaks. The agreement that lets them do that was written for a network that is now being switched off, and it does not stretch to the one replacing it. So the fibre reaches the building, and waits at a door that nobody has the right to open.

Which is why this is a paperwork problem wearing an engineering problem's clothes. Everything a resident is tempted to do about it, registering interest, gathering neighbours, ringing providers, is aimed at the wrong thing. The thing that moves is a signature on a wayleave, and Openreach is plain about what waits on it: “We can't do any work until we've got your signed document. So please send it back to us as quickly as you can.”

Who signs, by the kind of block

Direct answer: Not you, and not your landlord if you rent. In a block it is whoever owns or manages the building, which usually means the freeholder or the managing agent.

Openreach states it plainly: “Before we can begin installation to blocks of flats and apartments, we'll need permission from the Freeholder or Managing Agent, also known as a wayleave.” On its resident-facing page it puts the same point slightly wider: “We need permission from the Landlord, Freeholder or Managing Agent of your property to go ahead with an installation.” And CityFibre publishes the broadest list of who may give authority, being the only operator that names a residents' company: “As either the land or property owner or agent acting on their behalf, you have the written authority to enable us to carry out the route survey.” The table below has all four cases, with the wording behind each one.

The row that surprises people is the second one. If your block is run by its residents, through a right to manage company or a share of freehold arrangement, the signatories are the directors of that company. Companies House explains why they exist in the first place: “RTM companies allow long leaseholders in blocks of flats to take over the management of their building.” And the mechanism: “Leaseholders must set up a limited by guarantee company to carry out the management functions.”

Which is very good news, because a company has to publish who runs it. “You can get some details about a company for free”, and two of those free details are the ones you want: “company information, for example registered address and date of incorporation” and “current and resigned officers”. You can have the names and the address inside five minutes without asking anybody's permission to look.

If your block has an outside freeholder and a managing agent in between, the agent is the right first door and it is also the door where this most often stops. Write to them, ask in the letter for it to be passed on, and get the freeholder's own address at the same time. You are entitled to it: the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 requires that “A landlord of premises to which this Part applies shall by notice furnish the tenant with an address in England and Wales at which notices (including notices in proceedings) may be served on him by the tenant.” If they have not, then “any rent, service charge or administration charge otherwise due from the tenant to the landlord shall (subject to subsection (3)) be treated for all purposes as not being due from the tenant to the landlord at any time before the landlord does comply with that subsection”. Read that carefully: the money is suspended, not cancelled. It becomes due again the moment the landlord gives you the address.

And if nobody has ever told you who owns the building, look it up. In England and Wales the document you want is the title register: “It costs £7 to get a title register or a title plan.” The title register usually includes: the title number; who owns the property; how much the property was last sold for; whether the property has a mortgage; details of any 'restrictive covenants'; details of any 'easements'. There is a free tier as well, “It's free to get a property summary.”, and it is worth knowing what that does and does not carry: The property summary includes: the property's address, the address held by Royal Mail; the property description; the 'tenure type', the type of ownership the property has; whether there are any 'restrictive covenants'; whether there are any 'easements'. The free summary does not name the owner. Only the title register does, and that is the one that costs money. One honest caveat on the paid one: “You can download online copies of the information but you cannot use them as proof of ownership.” For writing a letter that is ample. In Scotland the register is a different one: “The land register is our main register. It records ownership of land and property in Scotland.” In Northern Ireland, “Land Registry is a record of land, houses and properties registered in Northern Ireland.” And: “Land & Property Services (LPS) is responsible for the registry.”

What the building is agreeing to, and what it costs

Direct answer: Nothing for the installation, on four operators' own published terms, with one published exception that applies to older buildings.

If you are the freeholder, the managing agent or a director of the residents' company, this section is written for you rather than about you. Every line in it is quoted from the people who would actually do the work, and where nothing is published this page says so instead of filling the gap.

On cost, Openreach publishes “Nothing, it's completely free of charge to install fibre.” and, on its landlord pages, “Free installation: No cost to landlords or tenants”. CityFibre publishes the same: “The survey of the property to establish an agreeable solution and the installation of full fibre to connect the property to our network is free and funded by CityFibre.” So does Hyperoptic: “We provide the equipment and install the infrastructure at no cost to you or your tenants.” Four operators, four published statements, one answer.

On where the work happens, Openreach: “We'll need access to the common areas of the building for installation of the fibre, both internally and externally.” Communal parts, inside and out. Nobody needs to enter a flat except the flats whose own residents order a service. Hyperoptic's published wayleave is the only operator document that spells out which communal parts, and it names “access to other parts of the Property (such as risers, or site access points, existing ducts for broadband and telephone services)”

On the objection that comes third, being tied to one company: you are not. Openreach publishes that “You can choose from any of the service providers offering Full Fibre over our network in your area.” A building connected by Openreach is a building every retailer on that network can sell into.

And on two things this page will not tell you, because nobody publishes them. No operator and no government source publishes a figure for what a connected building does to a flat's value or its rent, so none is offered here. You will have read that fibre sells or lets a flat faster, or supports a higher price. It may well be true. It is not published by anybody whose figures we could check, so it is not here. No operator publishes a list of buildings it will not serve, or the reasons a building would be turned down.

You do not need your neighbours

Direct answer: You do not need to get your neighbours organised first.

This is the most widely believed wrong thing about the whole subject, and Openreach contradicts it in a single word. Its published answer to the question opens with that word: “No, fibre can be installed regardless of how many residents are currently interested.”

No vote. No majority. No committee, no group email, no sign-up sheet on the noticeboard. One resident who can supply a name and an address for whoever can sign is enough to start the whole thing, which is exactly what the operator's own form asks for: “Use this form to provide freeholder or managing agent details so we can ask for permission to install Full Fibre in your building.”

Registering your interest with a network is still worth the two minutes, and it is worth knowing what it does and does not do. Hyperoptic, which runs exactly that kind of register, publishes the honest version: “Registering your interest helps us understand demand, but it doesn't guarantee that services will become available.” Its building form is the most open in the market about who may ask: Hyperoptic's building registration form accepts an enquiry from a freeholder, a leaseholder, a property manager, a resident management company, a residents' association or a tenant.

Why your neighbour has fibre and you do not

Direct answer: Because a building is rarely wired all at once. One operator publishes the two reasons, and neither of them is about you or your flat.

Hyperoptic is the one operator that addresses within-a-building variation head on, and its published answer names both causes: network infrastructure and building permissions. Neither of them is about you, and neither of them means your flat has been skipped.

In practice it usually comes down to how the building is plumbed. A riser serves one stack of flats and not another. A block built in two phases has two sets of ducting and only one was reached. Permission covered the communal areas on one side of a courtyard. From inside a flat none of that is visible, which is why the answer feels arbitrary and is not.

Virgin Media's model makes the same point from a different direction, because a Virgin block is generally either done or it is not: “A pre-wire is normally carried out in a block of flats. We connect individual premises to the building's integrated receiver system.” And from the resident's side: “Your block of flats may already be set up with our services. This means our cabling from individual premises link back into a main terminal, housed within a communal area of the building.” When a building is pre-wired, joining a flat to it is quick. When it is not, a flat cannot be done on its own.

If your block was finished after Boxing Day 2022

Direct answer: Building Regulations in England have required gigabit-ready infrastructure in new homes since 26 December 2022, so a new block should already have the ducting.

Almost all of this page is about buildings that went up before anybody thought about fibre. If yours did not, the picture is much better and you deserve to hear it now rather than at the bottom.

Since 26 December 2022, developers in England have had to “install gigabit-ready physical infrastructure necessary for gigabit-capable connections up to a network distribution point”. And, separately, “Subject to a £2,000 cost cap per dwelling, install a functional gigabit-capable connection”. Two requirements rather than one, and it is worth noticing that the cap sits on the connection and not on the infrastructure.

So in a new block the ducting to each flat should already exist, which removes the physical half of the problem entirely. These are Building Regulations for England, so a new block in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland is not covered by them. A new block in Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast is governed by its own nation's rules rather than by this one.

If your new block still returns nothing from a checker, the infrastructure is probably there and the commercial arrangement is not yet. That is a much shorter conversation with a developer or a managing agent than the one the rest of this page is about, and it is worth having early, while the developer still has people on site.

What the law gives you, which is not a right

Direct answer: Part 4A of the Electronic Communications Code is the one route in this field that exists for blocks of flats and for nothing else, and it belongs to the operator rather than to you.

There is one legal route in this whole field that was written for blocks of flats and nothing else, and it is worth knowing precisely what it is before you rely on it. Part 4A of the Electronic Communications Code exists for the unresponsive building owner. It reaches blocks and nothing else: premises are in scope if they “Premises are within the scope of this Part if they form part of a multiple dwelling building”

And then the part people miss. The applicant is not you. “The operator may apply to the court for a Part 4A order in relation to the code right specified in the request notice” A resident cannot start it, cannot be a party to it and cannot compel an operator to use it. Four notices, not one: a request notice, two warning notices and a final notice, each with its own timing.

It is also, by design, easy to stop. The Act treats a reply of either kind as the end of the road: “the required grantor responds to the operator if the required grantor agrees or refuses, in writing, to confer or otherwise be bound by the code right specified in the request notice on the terms that the operator seeks, or otherwise acknowledges the request notice in writing”. So a refusal in writing closes the process as completely as a yes would. Which tells you what the route is actually for: silence, not refusal.

The practical reading is not gloomy. A legal route you cannot start is worth less than a letter you can send this afternoon, and a freeholder who answers is worth more than one who is taken to court in eighteen months. That is why the finder above is the centre of this page and the law is a section near the bottom. If you rent and the question is about your own flat rather than the building, the renters guide covers the second permission and has a letter for it.

What each operator actually does in a block

Direct answer: They differ more than the marketing suggests, and the differences are published.

There is one thing not one of the five publishes, and its absence is worth noticing. No operator publishes a list of buildings it will not serve, or the reasons a building would be turned down. So a no from a checker is never a statement that your block is unsuitable. It is a statement about permission, today.

There is a second absence, and this one is universal. Nobody publishes how long it takes to get a block connected. Only one operator gives any figure at all, and its clock starts at the moment permission is granted, which is the step that actually takes the time. So every figure you will see quoted elsewhere is measuring the easy half, and this page is not going to add another one to the pile.

If you rent the flat rather than own it

Direct answer: Everything on this page applies to you. There is a second permission that does not, and it belongs to your own landlord rather than to the building.

A wayleave for the building is the freeholder's to give whoever pays the rent, so the finder above works for you exactly as it works for an owner. Openreach's resident form does not ask whether you own the flat. It asks for the freeholder's details.

The part that is different is anything happening inside your own flat. That is your landlord's decision rather than the freeholder's, it is a much smaller ask than most landlords expect, and our renters guide has a generator that writes that request with every quoted line taken from the operator's own published wording.

And if a line already works in the flat and you simply want to pay a different company for it, you are not asking anybody's permission for anything: that is a switch, your landlord is not a party to it, and the switching guide sets out what Ofcom's rules give you.

What this page used to say, and why it changed

Direct answer: Three of these are statements the operators' own published material contradicts, and they had been on this page for months.

Naming a correction rather than quietly making it is the house rule here, and this page needed five. The version being replaced was not careless. It was built from secondary sources about a subject where the primary ones are unusually good and unusually easy to find.

If you read the old version and acted on it, the two that mattered were the flat statement that you cannot sign a wayleave yourself, which is wrong for every resident-run block, and the implication that you need neighbours on side before anything can happen, which Openreach contradicts in one word. Both cost people time.

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