Cable firm trying to sort lawn row that went viral

5 December 2025

Workers who dug part of a woman's garden while trying to lay broadband cables for her neighbour believed they had permission, a supplier said.

Doorbell videos of the homeowner's reaction to the work in Milton Keynes have been viewed more than four million times on TikTok.

Her neighbour, who said she had apologised, previously explained she was expecting a narrow trench to be dug by hand within her boundary - not a much wider one on Ms Abbott's lawn.

Cable supplier Openreach said its staff thought they had permission to dig but there was a disagreement about the property boundary, which it was trying to help resolve.

News image — One of the images of the work that triggered the row, captured by Melanie Abbott's doorbell camera

Melanie Abbott A workman in a high-visibility jacket is operating a digger. The digger is on a long, narrow strip of grass in a front garden leading from a house to a pavement. The machine is digging into the grass on the edge of the garden, up against a metal-bar fence separating the grass from a paved drive belonging to the house next door. — One of the images of the work that triggered the row, captured by Melanie Abbott's doorbell camera

In the footage, Ms Abbott can be heard accusing her neighbour, who did not want to be named, of allowing the trench to be dug without asking permission.

Ms Abbott complained to Openreach and said she would seek legal advice.

An Openreach spokesman said: "We always need permissions from landowners to dig across private property and we get that in thousands of cases each year.

"In this case, we believed we had the permission, but there seems to be a disagreement about where exactly the property boundary lies."

He said they were talking to the neighbours about how to "resolve the situation amicably".