Plans for three town centre ‘communication hubs’ including public defibrillators and phone charging ports have been thrown out by Bury Council.
Planning permission was sought to put the hubs at Haymarket Street and outside the Rock and Millgate shopping centres. The units would offer free calls to landlines and range of functions that include free Wi-Fi, a 32-inch touch screen with access to local webpages, a publicly accessible defibrillator and both USB and wireless device charging ports.
The hubs would also have advertising screens. Communications firm JCDecaux said the hubs were designed to replace old-style enclosed call boxes and said their inclusion of a defibrillator in the unit design is ‘unique’.
However, Bury Council’s conservation officer Mark Kilby said the unit on Haymarket Street would be an ‘incongruous contemporising feature within the setting of the conservation area’.
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