Improving Broadband Services for Notes on Progress being Made in Holton St Mary and PCs

Cllr. Rob Wombwell 25-May-2021

Introduction

I was recently put in touch with the Parish Councils of Holton St Mary and Raydon in respect of work they were doing to improve the Broadband facilities for their parishes. They are now well advanced in projects to uplift these services taking advantage of current Government initiatives available in this area.

From the ensuing discussion it became clear that their approach would apply equally well to improving services for East Bergholt and that there was mutual benefit by sharing experience and lessons-learned in this area.

Below is a summary of Holton and Raydon’s progress so far, together with a summary of Government Initiatives available in this area and suggestions on how EB might tackle this in our village. Background and Need for Improved Broadband

EB, Holton St Mary and Raydon all have a “Fibre-to-the-Cabinet” (FTTC) capability which yields a theoretical maximum speed of about 80 Mbps. In reality speeds are limited by the copper connection between the Cabinet and individual properties which is much lower than this, typically, <40 Mbps and in many cases <10 Mbps. Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) connectivity reduces this loss and is the logical next step to keep the BB Infrastructure fit for purpose as BB demand increases.

Whilst speeds ~ 10 Mbps may be just about acceptable for current times the Government has projected that this will be too low for projected future demand which is expected to continually grow through (a) more local businesses using Internet services, (b) more people across the community working from home (c) the changing demographics of our villages (i.e.: younger people with higher Internet usage profiles and (d) the growth of new properties in the villages.

Things are worse in EB where not everyone has a Fibre capability yet. Those properties in the central part of the village are directly copper-connected back to the Exchange, limiting speeds to 17Mbps max, with much less (<10 Mbps) being commonly reported. Activities Undertaken by Holton and Raydon

Holton St Mary and Raydon Parish Councils have been actively seeking ways to improve their Broadband capability and have reached out to East Bergholt PC to explore collaboration opportunities. The “Broadband champions” contact points in Holton and Raydon’ PCs are Sally Thurlow and Keith Lovering respectively. Holton also has the benefit that a local resident (Sally Longmate) is Chief Executive Officer of SALC and sits on the SALC “Better Broadband in ” Board.

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Holton and Raydon separately contacted their residents asking whether they would take advantage of improved BB services. Holton sent out leaflets over Christmas and Raydon put up a notice on its village Facebook page. The PCs had 58 affirmative responses in Holton (from 105) and 60 in Raydon (from 205). The resulting community property names were entered into a portal to apply for the grant. Both PCs elected to use the Openreach portal, but others were available which covered the area.

The responses including properties in Great and and some in and , and all of Holton St Mary. The Holton proposal omitted a couple of new-builds because they were deemed part of the Higham Broadband Delivery UK plans (BDUK). It also omitted properties in Stubbins Lane which were on the EB Exchange.

They now have an allocated Openreach PM with whom they are working closely to finalise the properties that will be part of the phase 1 implementation. They have asked about the situation facing those properties connected to the EB Exchange and are awaiting a response internally, (it seems the way Openreach approach a project's implementation is by separating it into sub exchanges areas).

In respect to the grant process; once the properties are confirmed, DCMS vouchers must be formally applied for and "pledged" to Openreach. An Alternative that has been considered is to set up a company to deliver this – but potentially more complicated for the consumers. Assuming approval, the PCs expect the project to take a year to reach implementation.

Although Holton proposal of 50% respondents exceeded the required 40% target, the combined proposals are about £80k short of the £250k target for 100% connectivity funding. The two parishes are planning to use their CIL money to meet this shortfall. Whether they can needs to be clarified; the argument for being that telecoms infrastructure is a part of the UK’s “critical national infrastructure” and so improvements should also be eligible for local CIL investment. The decision on this needs to be authorised in each locality by the local authority, (which is Babergh DC). Holton and Raydon have already written to Babergh to confirm this understanding and are awaiting a reply. It follows that this decision would presumably also apply to EB.

The two PCs have worked together before to tackle various BB issues such as reliability and performance and thus already have a high level of collaboration. They also have the support of Sally Longmate (SALC CEO) who has direct contacts (via the SALC Board) with the Openreach regional lead for “Better Broadband” the Openreach project managers. She also ahs a useful reporting link back via Jo Churchill MP. Sally has also suggested to the two PCs that they should combine their separate villages’ approach so that only one set of administration would be needed. Funding Opportunities

The Government announced some time ago its “Government’s Rural Gigabit Connectivity” policy for improving the Broadband capability for rural communities. This is aimed specifically at local businesses and group projects, but not for individual properties. The policy is specifically targeting communities where speeds are <100 Mbps, which covers the three parishes. For further information see here for the Policy, here for the Detail, and here for the Eligibility conditions.

This policy is supported by DCMS “Digital Broadband Voucher Scheme” which is a grant process that allocates vouchers for offsetting infrastructure improvement costs.For further information see here for Funding detail, and here for how the Voucher system works.

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OFCOM produce a spreadsheet covering the UK which lists each region’s eligibility for help through the scheme. EB (covered by post code CO76) is flagged as being eligible on this spreadsheet. Possible Next Steps for EB

EB could doubtless make a case for similar funding however, we have not yet started with any of the necessary process stages. To do so and take advantage of the Government initiatives we would first need to get feedback from the properties in the village on their intention to use the improved services before being able to apply through the Government portal. That will require a communication campaign to make the village aware of the opportunity.

It follows that it would probably make sense to make this a part of our Neighbourhood Plan Update survey and include a “Better Broadband for Bergholt” campaign in the EB NP Communications Strategy.

Whatever approach we decide on it’s clear that we would benefit by collaborating with Holton and Raydon, and wherever possible, aligning our work with theirs. This would clearly be to mutual advantage, with us benefiting from their contacts, lessons-learned and possible economies of scale and Holton benefiting in that their areas on the EB Exchange (e.g.: the 5 properties in Stubbins Lane) who be include in the combined improvement programme.

There is an issue to do with new developments which needs clarifying. Interestingly, new housing developments have their own funding opportunities, e.g.: Openreach will fund FTTP for new developments > 20 properties provider the developer applies (see Reference here ).

Given that EB will soon be seeing two substantial developments in the parish we need to confirm that the developers have this intention (and this knowledge). Developers have their own portal to access this offer, (see Reference here )

There is also help for developers of smaller schemes (<20 units) to provide FTTP to their properties, typically limited to cost (Holton and Raydon PCs have checked this and are of the opinion that this is about £1700 per property - and usually taken up). This is probably worth us checking as a part of any developer’s Planning Applications submission.

Another initiative that Holton and Raydon have investigated through their SALC connection is the Suffolk scheme for providing “grand-pads” ( i-pads) for elderly non-tech savvy elderly residents so they can receive services (e.g .physiotherapy, doctor consultations, order shopping, talk to relatives) as an already set up device. Apparently these have been hugely successful and popular – and may well be relevant to some of our residents in EB.

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