'Our beautiful villages have been abandoned over vital broadband rollout – we are fed-up!'

Furious Britons living in rural communities are demanding urgent access to “absolutely essential” superfast internet. 

MPs, campaigners and volunteers are piling pressure on the Government to deliver full-fibre broadband to far-flung corners of the British countryside. 

It was announced today that more than one million homes, businesses and public buildings can now access the best internet speeds on the market as a result of Department for Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) schemes. 

New DSTI data shows 1,006,800 homes and businesses have been connected, or are able to access, a better broadband connection thanks to UK Government-funded programmes since the first upgrade was delivered in August 2012 – the equivalent of rolling out to one home, business or public building every six minutes.

But campaigners and MPs from across the political spectrum fear “anti-competitive” Government schemes are not fit for purpose and vast swathes of rural Britain are at risk of becoming “digital deserts”. 

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READ MORE: ‘It’s impossible to make mobile phone calls in our beautiful UK village – we’ve had enough!’

“It isn’t good enough”

Helen Morgan, MP for agricultural North Shropshire, said: “Decent broadband is absolutely essential if we want our rural areas to be economically and socially vibrant places fit for a 21st century economy.

“We cannot let places like Shropshire become digital deserts, just as the Government boast of ever-greater investments in rural areas.

“The answer has to be a serious plan to rollout rural improvements, and to make telecoms firms to put the work in if they won’t move fast enough.

“If it isn’t good enough for an urban area like Birmingham, it isn’t good enough for a rural area like Shropshire.”

Project Gigabit is the Government’s flagship programme to enable hard-to-reach communities to access lightning-fast broadband.

But Conservative MP for West Dorset Chris Loder fears the £5billion scheme run by Building Digital UK (BDUK), an arm of the DSTI, may result in providers becoming less competitive and therefore delivering poorer services for his constituents.  

He said: “In the next few months, the successful broadband provider will be announced for the latest £14million BDUK contract for West Dorset. 

“This contract will serve thousands of rural homes, bringing our Gigabit broadband coverage in line with the national average. 

“But as I mentioned in Parliament in December, if a provider signs up to one of the various Government schemes – whether it’s the voucher scheme or a community fibre partnership – it doesn’t necessarily have to deliver on the scheme, and it can subsequently block the capacity or capability of a competitor. 

“This also affects the whole bidding process for providing the next level of improvements is hugely affected by this as well. 

“This is a great concern to me and something which we recently saw in the Bridport area with AllPoints Fibre. 

“When there are other businesses and companies that believe they could provide that service to local people much more quickly, and possibly more efficiently, it is anti-competitive to allow that sort of behaviour.”

“This scheme won’t reach these areas”

The Government has today claimed its plan to “turbocharge British broadband is working” and the UK is “rolling out gigabit networks faster than any country in the EU”.

However “fed-up” residents of a bucolic community in the Eden Valley area of north east Cumbria say they have fallen through the cracks after plans to roll out vital broadband services to the area were cancelled at the 11th hour due to a lack of funding. 

Volunteers in Warcop, Sandford, Coupland Beck, Bleatarn and Ormside (pictured below) worked with community-led internet provider Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) to physically dig the infrastructure needed to get the area connected. 

But the Lancashire-based community benefit society did not secure funding from Project Gigabit as it was unable to provide a workable proposal, meaning months of work by volunteers went to waste. 

Children at the local primary school (pictured outside Warcop Parish Hall below) would have stood to benefit with their building having received a free 1GB synchronous internet connection under the original plans. 

Instead telecoms provider Fibrus secured a £108million Project Gigabit contract to roll out internet to the region, with more than 36,000 homes and businesses in Cumbria now having access to a gigabit-capable service.

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron claims the current solution will not work for the Eden community because it is not currently profitable or commercially viable for Fibrus to roll internet out to the roughly 20-square-mile area. 

“If we don’t get broadband here, we are stuffed”

Volunteers David White, 57, a farmer, and his wife Carol White, 58, an IT worker, have been at the forefront of the campaign to get the area connected.

Mrs White said: “With B4RN, we were due to start the dig around June 2023, with completion of availability to all properties within Warcop, Sandford, Bleatarn, Ormisde and Coupland Beck (irrespective of the terrain), by Christmas 2023. 

“But now we don’t envisage that we will get any chance of connection to a gigabit system before June 2026.

“As B4RN were unable to keep in proper contact with BDUK for six months as BDUK were putting in another computer system, they had no reason to think it wouldn’t go ahead.

“Tim Farron has been excellent at badgering the Government department and the Ministers of State for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology but alas, to little effect so far. 

“Project Gigabit is supposed to be for reaching rural communities. 

“However, the more rural you are and the more difficult the terrain, the less interested they are.”

The impact on the community has been far-reaching, with Mr White telling of how his sons have now moved away from the area to Glasgow and Edinburgh in pursuit of work in Scotland resulting in a loss of young talent.

Mr White said: “I have got two lads who have unfortunately taken off to the big cities. 

“But the only way rural communities are going to survive and thrive is if we have broadband so that these highly paid and lucrative jobs will draw people back.

“We are losing out railway ticket offices, medical needs are now online and we have to be online for virtual conferences. 

“If we don’t get broadband here, we are stuffed.”

Robert Sandland, 62, who helps run the Eden Valley Railway as one of its trustees said not being properly connected placed additional strain on the charity.

He said: “It is an additional worry that we really shouldn’t have.

“When we had Storm Arwen, for instance, we lost power for five days. 

“We lost all connections including phones because the copper wire was brought down. 

“So we had to employ additional safety measures at an extra cost to ensure that we could run a railway service at the time because if there was a bridge strike people we unable to phone us to inform us.”

The community is now urgently pleading with the Government to offer much-needed funding so B4RN can commence work on the project.

“Thanks to our investment, rural communities held back by achingly slow internet can now tap into the best speeds on the market. 

“The UK is rolling out gigabit networks faster than any country in the EU, with eight in 10 premises now able to access upgrades. 

“It is a track record that shows we are rapidly building the infrastructure Britain needs to improve lives and grow the economy.”