I met with Openreach this morning together with Neil Richardson (who has been working with the Chiseldon residents) and we are pleased to confirm that we have now officially moved into the build phase of the project – we did it!
It is definitely happening!!!!
Gigabit Fibre is definitely coming to our two communities!
As many of you have seen Openreach engineers have been in the area finalising their plans for the rollout and we will learn over the coming weeks the timescales for delivery, we’ll share that info with you as soon as we can. In order to claim the voucher Openreach have a 12 month period before they expire and most were pledged late last year.
If you live in Wanborough & Liddington or Chiseldon you could still miss out if you haven’t pledged your voucher and for those who haven’t engaged, it may not be too late.
Go to https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity to pledge.
Households who haven’t pledged or been part of the scheme may have to pay to connect to the new network later so whilst there is still an opportunity to use the free Government vouchers of £1500 for a home or £3,500 for a business it makes sense to take part.
Neil and I continue to explore ways of getting the un-validated vouchers converted and letters will be going out to these people shortly, we are also looking at a method of validating vouchers by SMS instead of email. If you haven’t received your voucher please email me again as Openreach can access the vouchers again.
I would like to personally thank Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC MP who helped start this process from the first meeting he and I had with Openreach in April 2020 and celebrate the achievement through lockdown of promoting this! We have raised nearly £2m in pledges and Neil Richardson has been a fantastic advocate in Chiseldon, promoting and sharing the benefits, organising leaflets, as well as joining me on very regular briefings and workshops to achieve this.
Thank you to local printers (ESP Colour) who produced the Wanborough Leaflet for free and those helpers who did the deliveries.
This has also been a great community effort with many residents being Gigabit champions online and sharing the positive news with friends and neighbours, but please keep spreading the word to your friends/neighbours so nobody misses out.
We still have the other villages to address, and some missing streets and we are working on what can be attached to these schemes and what will have to be done separately under a new funding application.
Gary Sumner Neil Richardson Robert Buckland