Rural broadband fund to be wound down
Rural broadband fund to be wound down
The Government’s £20 million Rural Community Broadband Fund is to be wound down next year with only a small part of its available funding allocated to projects.
The scheme was launched two years ago for community projects aiming to bring faster broadband to isolated areas and was considered a method of halting economic decline in villages.
But only three projects have been given the green light, costing less than £1 million and connecting 2,500 households to better broadband, rather than the 70,000 properties the scheme was supposed to reach. It is expected that £10 million provided by the EU will have to be handed back unspent.
Critics of the scheme, which is run by Defra, have complained about the difficulty in securing funding because of bureaucracy and problems with local council support for projects involving providers other than BT.
Malcolm Corbett of the Independent Networks Co-operative told The Guardian: “It's extraordinary that we've ended up in a situation like this. These rural communities are going to get left behind. Broadband in rural areas is extremely important for economic activity because many people work from home or from small offices."
The biggest project to win RCBF funds is Rothbury in Northumberland, where 1,500 homes will receive superfast broadband thanks to a £460,000 grant. Two others – the Tove Valley in Northamptonshire and Fell End in Cumbria – were also approved for funding but they will only connect fewer than 500 homes.
The fundamental problem that projects face securing RCBF money is that their local authority must guarantee BT will not use public money to bring broadband to the area. Under European rules, public money cannot be used for two networks in the same place. But local councils have been reluctant to guarantee this and as a result, many rural schemes are laying the blame for their failure with BT.
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(Image: Kings Sutton)
