Meeting documents

To consider the attached report.

Contact officer: Evelyn Kaluza – 01296 585549

The committee also considered a report on Aylesbury Vale Broadband Ltd. The business plan of which had been submitted to its meeting on 6 September 2016. The Economy and Business Development Scrutiny Committee had been invited to comment on the report and pass its views to the relevant Cabinet Member.

In December, 2014, the Council had committed £1.536m of New Homes Bonus funding to support the roll-out of superfast broadband across the District.  In April, 2015, the Council had approved an initial loan from this funding of £200,000 to run a pilot project through the creation of a limited liability company – Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB) – to provide superfast broadband to the villages of North Marston and Granborough.

Progress with the pilot had been reported to this Committee on a regular basis, with the last report having been submitted on 15 March, 2016. 

As a result of the success of the pilot, in April, 2016, a further loan was approved in the sum of £500,000 to support further expansion of the service across the Vale.  These loans had been made under commercial rates and were expected to be repaid by 30 June 2022.

AVB had been structured with the majority shareholder (95%) AVDC and 5% Ironic Thought.  Ironic Thought was owned by Andrew Mills who had been appointed as the managing Director in July, 2016.  Some of the wider benefits of AVB's progress to date included:-

·         AVB’s network, in the middle of rural Aylesbury Vale, was delivering speeds that only 2% of the UK population could currently receive.

·         Approximately one in three of AVB’s customers were small businesses who were now benefitting from AVB’s 100% fibre broadband.

·         As a direct result of AVB’s pilot, its competitors (including fixed and wireless providers) had spent an estimated £600,000 on upgrading their existing solutions and providing new services to Aylesbury Vale.  This expenditure was unlikely to have happened without AVB’s existence and it meant fewer people having to make do with poor broadband in Aylesbury Vale.

The business plan included plans for expansion which went further across the Vale to deliver fibre to the home (FTTH) to more villages.  This was predicated on an additional £550k loan being allocated to AVB from the original £1.536m of funds earmarked for superfast broadband.

It had been forecast by several industry bodies that demand for bandwidth was expected to grow exponentially by 2020.  Fibre was the only known technology that could cope with this demand, without additional investment and therefore by selecting FTTH, AVB was reducing its future support and maintenance costs and increasing confidence in the financial forecasts for the future.

Andrew Mills from Aylesbury Vale Broadband attended the meeting and gave a presentation on the progress so far and future initiatives.

Members were pleased with the progress being made and enquired about the next phase of the project along with more details of how the technology worked.

Andrew was asked what his key successes were; he stated that it was customer satisfaction from bringing fast fibre broadband to people who had not previously been able to receive it.

The Chairman and Members thanked Andrew for taking the time to update the committee and stated that there would be further updates to Committee in the future.

A copy of AVB’s draft business plan was submitted as part of the confidential part of the agenda. It was necessary to resolve to exclude the public whilst the plan was discussed under section 100(A)(4) of the Local Government Act, 1972, because of the commercial sensitivity of the information contained therein as defined in paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A of the Act.

RESOLVED –

That the draft business plan be endorsed and this Committee’s views be conveyed to the relevant Cabinet Member.