BRITISH Telecom has proposed to remove 42 public phone boxes from Purbeck, as part of its national review of payphones.

The telecommunications company, which has contacted Purbeck District Council (PDC) about its plans, wants to remove the payphones because they're hardly used.

Indeed, figures showing the phone boxes' usage reveals 14 of them have not been used at all in the past 12 months.

Of the remainder, a dozen have been used no more than three times over the same period.

PDC leader Gary Suttle said: "The council has been made responsible for co-ordinating consultation responses to these proposals and we will be responding to BT on a case-by-case basis.

"The council is not in any way responsible for the proposals put forward by BT."

A list of the 42 public phone boxes can be found on the district council's website, alongside figures showing their usage over a 12-month period.

BT insists none of the payphones will be removed without agreement of the council, which has launched a public consultation on the plans which finishes in the New Year.

Cllr Suttle said: "We have already contacted parish councils for their views, but I also urge local residents to take a look at our website to find out which phone boxes are in question and whether they agree or disagree to them being removed."

BT's national payphones review was launched in response to the dramatic decline in public payphone use, following the past decade's explosion in personal mobile phone use.

A spokesman for BT said: "We are committed to providing a public payphone service, but with usage declining by over 90 per cent in the last decade, we've continued to review and remove payphones which are no longer needed.

"In all instances where there's no other payphone within 400 metres, we'll ask for consent from the local authority to remove the payphone.

"Where we receive objections from the local authority, we won't remove the payphone."

BT says it will also consider all requests to take part in its adopt a kiosk scheme.

More than 3,500 communities across the UK have already successfully applied to take advantage of the scheme.

Under the initiative, BT will disconnect the phone in the box and remove it, but the kiosk - in many cases BT's iconic red phone boxes - is left in place.

Disconnected phone boxes have been used for a variety of things, such as information points and local book exchanges.