A ROW has broken out over a public telephone in Meldon which is being removed to make way for a new village hall.

No-one is prepared to meet the cost of £4,000 to re-site the phone box on alternative land in the hamlet and so Meldon will lose the facility.

But British Telecom says the modern-style phone box is hardly ever used and with only a handful of people living in the hamlet, it is not worthwhile as a public service.

Chairman of the village hall committee Courtney Heard said the facility, currently sited on his land, was in the way of the new hall project, which will be built with a £232,000 lottery grant.

'We asked Okehampton Hamlets Parish Council if it would meet the costs of locating it somewhere else but it is not prepared to,' he said. 'This is not a private phone box and should be the responsibility of the parish council.'

But the parish council believes the village hall committee should provide the money.

Okehampton Hamlets Parish councillor David Terry said to date the parish council had received no complaints from members of the public about the removal of the phone box but it did support the concept of a call box in the village.

'However, we cannot justify funding the considerable sum of money necessary to move the existing one,' he said.

'As the requirement to move it was sourced at the new village hall, we felt it was the village hall committee's responsibility if it was to be moved or taken away.'

His view has been reiterated by Meldon resident Stuart Plant, who feels the phone box should be retained because it serves not only the community but also visitors to Meldon Reservoir and the moor and is a vital link to emergency services in the event of an accident or breakdown.

'Not everybody has mobile phones these days and why should they have to?' he said. 'This box is on the Ordnance Survey maps and people walk off the moor to Meldon to use the phone.

'The village hall committee has received over £200,000 in grant money to benefit the community and the first thing it does is to remove the phone box — that does not seem very community-minded to me.'

External communications manager for BT Les King said if a phone box was on private land, the owner of the land could have it removed at any time.

'If we had a request to install a new box now, Meldon would not meet the criteria,' he said. 'The existing facility has hardly been used in the last year.'

A spokesman for Dartmoor National Park Authority said the authority would be concerned at the loss of such a public facility if that view was widely shared by the whole community with regard to walkers on the moor.

'It is the case, however, that most people use Meldon as a starting point for walking because it has a car park,' he said.

'People arrive by car and therefore if an emergency occurred they would have ready access to the emergency services.'