Mr. Walker said they arrive at his Westminster office in paper stacks dozens at a time, sometimes just before the Christmas holiday. Then the clock starts ticking: 56 days until, in the absence of an objection from the council, the phone company has the right to start work.

Establishing credible objections is a laborious process, forcing planners to solicit input from nearby businesses and traffic specialists. The phone companies often promise to remove two 1990s-era boxes for every new one they add, but Mr. Walker said Westminster did not want any, period.

Matthew Carmona, a professor of planning and urban design at University College London, said the situation “has, in a way, caught policymakers by surprise.” After removing phone boxes that fell into disuse with the rise of mobile phones, he said, “the phone companies have realized they can make money from them in a different way, and in doing that they can bypass any regulations.”

The spread of the phone boxes has also exposed the drawbacks of London’s fragmented planning system. Accommodations for the visually impaired, for example, differ in each of London’s boroughs.

Sarah Gaventa, a former design adviser to the British government, said a public art project she was working on had required dozens of applications to seven different local authorities, a barrier that she said did not exist in other major European cities.