Meeting documents

To consider the information attached.

Contact Officer: Tracey Aldworth 01296 585003

In December 2014 the Council had committed £1.536m of New Homes Bonus funding to support the rollout of broadband across the district.  £200,000 of this had been used to run a pilot project and to create Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB) to provide a service to the North Marston and Granborough area.

AVB was 95% owned by AVDC and 5% owned by Ironic Thought.  AVB was being funded by a commercial loan from AVDC, repayable by 2022 and with an interest rate of 7.5%.  The ambition set out in the original business plan was to start to make an operating profit by the end of the second year of the whole pilot network going live.  The company is on track to achieve this.

The Company had been incorporated in June 2015 and the physical works had then commenced in August 2015.  An update had been provided in September 2015 to the Committee, with a further update provided to this meeting.  In addition to the information reported to the meeting, latest news and information about the programme could be accessed from the AVB website at www.avbroadband.co.uk.

Mr Andrew Mills (Aylesbury Vale Broadband) and Mr Navin Sankersingh (Connected Counties) attended the scrutiny meeting to present to the Committee and to answer queries from Members.

Since the last Committee report, the network had gone live in parts of the North Marston area in November 2015 and was currently being extended to Granborough. There had been a 40% take up for the areas currently served in North Marston, which was significantly higher than the take up for the Connected Counties programme for example, which was just under 20% ("take up" is the industry standard measurement for the percentage of properties using the service out of the households the network reaches).  The aim was to increase this take up to the 60% set out in the business plan and increase the take up as the rollout continues.

The broadband service had been extended to the North Marston school which was allowing the school to utilise on-line resources that had previously been inaccessible.  It was also reaching farming properties, some of which were up to 3kms from the centre of North Marston.  A free public Wi-Fi spot was being offered around the church in North Marston and in the coming weeks free Wi-Fi access would also be provided to the village hall and shop area.  This would help to encourage the use of community facilities as well as addressing the issue of mobile black spots in the village.

The AVB network was classified as an ultra-fast broadband service (i.e. delivering at least 300Mb/s), with this speed of broadband currently only available to 2% of the UK population.  The broadband pricing strategy was:-

·                    30 MB/s up and down - £30 per month (cheapest package).

·                    100 MB/s - £38 per month.

·                    300 MB/s - £135 per month.

In addition to providing an ultra-fast fibre broadband service in rural Aylesbury Vale, AVB’s presence had also driven an additional estimated £600,000 investment by other broadband providers (both fixed and wireless).  As with all pilot projects, there had been a number of lessons learned, that would be considered as part of the overall project evaluation.

Members were informed that there had been significant interest and demand from many locations across the Vale for improved broadband provision and there were 55 locations in the Vale that had requested AVB consider extending the service to their area.  The company was now focusing on completing the work in the pilot area before actively considering what next steps might be taken to further roll out the service.

Alongside the AVB Pilot project, work had also been progressing with the next stage of the Connected Counties scheme.  As part of this programme BT have been asked to model over £4m of district council, Local Enterprise Partnership and Government funding.  A number of preference areas had been included in this extension programme in order to help focus the responses.  The LEP had also identified a number of preference areas across the country where there was a high business/homeworking incidence and this included a number of areas in the Vale.

In addition, the villages of Ashendon, Aston Abbotts, Bishopstone, Calvert Green, Charndon, Drayton Parslow, Hardwick, Great Brickhill, Lillingstone Lovell, Newton Longville, Stewkley, Thornton and Wingrave and Rowsham have been specified as preference areas.  These had been identified as areas that had very poor or no broadband coverage and where a high level of demand had been expressed through the previous connected counties project or the AVB scheme.  BT had been asked to prioritise a solution in these areas if possible as part of their response to the contract extension.

The Committee was also provided with information on the superfast broadband extension to Bucks, as part of Contract 2 with Herts CC, and the issues that were holding back the release of a full impact assessment that would allow the project to progress.  Until it was resolved it would not be possible to confirm the areas that were in scope for contract 2 of the Connected Counties project and the resultant proposed rollout dates.

It was anticipated that AVDC would be in a position to confirm where the rest of £1.356m of the NHB funding set aside for broadband activity would be invested by the end April 2016 at the latest.

Members requested further information and were informed as follows:-

(i)         that getting AVB up and running had been extremely challenging, with AVB having to use 3 civil teams for the cable laying due to a number of issues.  There were also issues to be overcome as the ducting for the cable crossed both public and private land.

(ii)        that AVB would be looking to improve communication with users by having village champions to disseminate information locally.  Two videos had also been posted on Facebook.

(iii)       that the new broadband service had been taken up by 40% of the properties in North Marston that had access to the service (which was 14% of all available properties in that area).  The average subscription cost was £36 per month, with projected income for March 2016 of £2,300.

(iv)       that the feedback from customers receiving the new service had been overwhelmingly positive.

(v)       that while there were far fewer problems and support requirements due to AVB providing the service over dedicated fibre, it was recognised that more robust customer support arrangements would need to be put in place, such as a support desk, as AVB grew.

(vi)       that it should be possible in the future for the fibre network to be extended to villages around large settlements.

(vii)      an explanation was provided on issues regarding the superfast broadband extension to Bucks, including that it was intended to expand the Dayrell exchange as a part of the Contract 2 with Herts CC which would improve broadband provided to the Lillingstone Lovell and Thornton areas of the District.

An undertaking was given to provide the local Member with more information in due course on this particular issue.

(viii)     that currently customers primarily found out about AVB through word of mouth.  However, as the business grew it was the intention to appoint a dedicated Civils Manager and some engineering apprentices to assist in further rolling out the service.

(ix)       that Contract 1 of the Connected Counties project had connected 44,100 of the 45,000 households.  It was hoped that Contract 2 would be signed off by April 2016, with work then undertaken from the end of 2016 for two to two and a half years.

(x)       That AVDC had pressed the HS2 Select Committee about the possibility of providing fast broadband alongside the HS2 line, although nothing had been confirmed.

(xi)       that BT had indicated as part of their response to the broadband programme specification that they were looking to provide a 94% response in the contract for broadband provision to the villages mentioned in paragraph 3.15 of the Committee report.

RESOLVED –

(1)       That Mr Mills and Mr Sankersingh be thanked for attending the meeting and providing an update position to Members.

(2)       That the latest position regarding the broadband programmes and the rollout of broadband in the District be noted.