How much is your local cricket pitch, church roof or bowling green worth to you? Or your children, grandparents or neighbours?
You would say, of course, they are invaluable. To telecoms companies, these buildings and plots of land are priceless too, giving them all they need to build phone masts and infrastructure on, providing us with vital superfast broadband across the country.
It used to be that the value of this land was decided based on a market rate. But that all changed five years ago, when the little-known Electronic Communications Code (ECC) allowed mobile phone operators to slash the rents they pay to site providers by as much as 90%.
There is little that sports clubs, churches, councils, charities and small businesses can do to fight their corner and dispute these new terms. The one legal fallback available – the Lands Tribunal – only kicks in when both sides cannot reach agreement, and it is ruinously expensive at around £100,000 per case.
It means property owners are forced to accept arbitrary rental cuts that violate both the spirit and the letter of contracts they may have signed decades ago. And they cannot simply have the masts removed – the Landlord and Tenant Act puts paid to that.
This nightmare for property rights is becoming more widespread as thousands of these leases come up for renewal every year. The number treated by the Lands Tribunal is growing, with strain placed on the judicial system, the taxpayer and the stalled 5G rollout this legislation was supposed to jump-start.
The government has one opportunity to stop this before it cascades out of control. The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill is in its final stages in the House of Lords, updating the ECC, which lies at the heart of these problems.
If we want current and potential site providers to lease their land in future, the bill needs to be amended to reverse the unfair deal it delivers to landlords, and sort out the legal quagmire once and for all. It is time to decide the value of property in the marketplace, not the courtroom.
The Earl of Lytton is a British chartered surveyor, crossbench peer and member of the House of Lords
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