Cllr Pearl Lewis

The Local Area Forum (funded by Bucks County Council) has agreed to grant us £5000 from it’s local priorities budget to set up our Community Interest Company (CIC) to begin delivering on various broadband projects around the region. The idea of the company is to explore options with commercial companies to commission, deliver and finance various solutions for broadband. There are many ways that broadband can be delivered to rural areas – options range from satellites, wireless towers, ducting being laid over or under ground, or linking villages up with already enabled ‘community hubs’ like schools, hospitals and churches – and the CIC will be looking at creating the right ‘formula’ for working out what solutions are both logistically and financially most suitable for this.

A particularly interest element that we are looking at is the use of rights of way to lay ducting for fibres. The  CIC would apply for grants to repay the cost of the ducting and therefore making the ducting a community asset, renting it out to service providers and putting profits in to the CIC to continue it’s work.

The Business, Innovation and Skills department has money available for projects like ours  - £530million from their £830million for broadband project will go to help rural areas build digital hubs for fibre optic connections. The grant applications open in March 2011.

Click on ‘Broadband’ at the top of this page to read about the CIC in more detail.