Dear Ellisfield resident
Hampshire County Council (HCC) have now signed a contract with BT Openreach for the second stage of their Superfast Broadband programme and issued a press release explaining that Superfast coverage will extend to 95% of the county, completing by mid 2019.
HCC have given Ellisfield Parish Council (EPC) an early view of the scope of the second contract, prior to the details being published on the HCC website by the end of January. We understand that the Ellisfield North (Herriard 2) cabinet is included in the later stages of the programme but the Ellisfield South, Berrydown Lane and Grammarsham Lane properties are not covered. By way of reminder the Ellisfield North (Herriard 2) cabinet is the existing BT cabinet at the junction between College Lane and Church Lane. This cabinet is connected to 50 houses plus the solar farm and anaerobic digester sites (Bell Lane, Green Lane from Meadow View, College Lane from College Farm, Church Lane, Northgate Lane and Bushywarren Lane).
Given the rural demographics we are pleased to see that there is at least some HCC investment proposed for Ellisfield. The EPC Broadband Team will continue to work on options to provide Superfast broadband to the whole village, through public or private funding or a combination of the two. We still have not received the estimated fast broadband speeds achievable for the various houses for which it was requested and will continue to press for this BT promised information. In addition we are still investigating whether any of the businesses on Bushywarren Lane would benefit from a quicker roll out of fast broadband and so would contribute to this or would be willing to make a community support donation to help the disadvantaged residents in Ellisfield South.
We will be providing a full update on the broadband project at the next EPC meeting on Monday 26th January (the meeting will commence at 7:30pm in the Memorial Hall).
Regards
Jacqueline Matthews
Ellisfield Parish Clerk
Phone: 01256 381149
Mobile: 07816 630 658