JUDI Binks, Mid Devon District Councillor for Sandford and Creedy, has sent the following letter to Stephen Walford, the incoming chief executive of Mid Devon District Council:

I HAVE emailed you a link to an article on the involvement of West Oxfordshire District Council to roll out better broadband to all its residents because of its importance to the local economy and encouraging inward investments?

Mid Devon is one of the worst served areas for good broadband, with many areas also lacking mobile signal.

At present, both Mid Devon District Council and Devon County Council seem to be dependent on the slipping timetable of BT and apparent failure of Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) to negotiate Phase Two yet.

We must look for alternative solutions for our hard to reach rural settlements where a surprisingly high amount of productive home and farm based economic activity is carried on, which is reliant on consistent and reliable upload and download speeds.

Our recent Community Broadband Needs Survey showed that even more business possibilities would be created given greater speeds.

The modern digital rural economy is not just about building shops, factories and roads: it’s about putting in place a decent network of optical fibre to support tele-working from home in high value information and technical services such as financial services, education, leisure and tourism as well as farming.

This is how we can future-proof our rural communities to attract investment and provide jobs for our young people, whilst protecting our beautiful villages and countryside.

I would have hoped for greater interest and support from MDDC in this respect.

Mid Devon should be proactive in the campaign to provide better digital connectivity for its residents on the merits of its value as a business model alone.

We should also be asking how we can help existing profitable businesses in rural areas become more profitable simply by ensuring that optical fibre network capable of reaching all premises is installed now.

Oodles of public money has been granted to achieve this target, yet Devon and Somerset are the last counties in England to even get to Phase 2.

Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) is in possible danger of losing its EU funding because of the current progress, so it is time to follow the example of West Oxfordshire and be more proactive in meeting the connective needs of future generations as well as existing residents.

For example, instead of handing the contract to one sole agency, who will pick the low hanging fruit first, we could encourage tenders from several smaller firms offering small-scale, tailor-made solutions to hard to reach settlements.

The ultimate solution is for communities to actually sort it out themselves as they are doing in rural Lancashire through the B4RNS model where individuals and farmers are digging the trenches, negotiating wayleaves and blowing the fibre through the pipes from parish to parish. All properties are included and speeds routinely reach 1,000 Mbs. ( My usual speed is under 1Mb and no mobile signal).

During the recent floods, their digital connectivity continued when other services failed.

I have arranged a Public Meeting on Wednesday, January 20, at Black Dog Memorial Hall, for all interested local parishes and residents in Mid Devon to hear the results of our recent survey and listen to other options as well as having the chance to ask questions of Matt Barrow of CDS and Laurent Boon of BT.

Please contact me by email at: [email protected] for further details.

I would welcome the chance to discuss this matter further with you and the council’s business manager and invite you both to the Black Dog meeting, too.

Cllr Judi Binks

Sandford and Creedy Ward