Recently there was the opportunity to cover the cost of rolling out fibre broadband locally in our very rural area primarily by Government vouchers applied for by local residents for each of their properties, BUT THIS WEEK IT HAS SUDDENLY BEEN ANNOUNCED THAT THIS IS TO COME TO AN END ON September 10th 2021!
In the past B4RN needed a certain level of voucher sign-up to start to build a project (25%) and then they could claim vouchers as the build progressed and more people signed up along the way as the build passed their home etc, they’d usually claim vouchers for 50% of properties and this made their role outs financially viable.
NOW however, B4RN have been told they ONLY are able to claim Government vouchers that have been signed up for by the 10th of September 2021 and there will be NO MORE FUNDING from the government after this point for at least 12-18 months.
It’s Now or never for our Area
We really need properties to sign up for a voucher now or the area will lose out. It’s unlikely the opportunity for this is going to come around again for many years if ever again!
Then the only alternative is raising the money by investment locally from you who live here – B4RN estimate the installation costs for all the B4NTR projects to be 3.6 million pounds or ~ £2500 per property in our area for every single property. As below BT would charge more.
But the vouchers would cover these costs an individual property would maximum only need to pay for installation (£150) and a month of service (£30) to secure the voucher funding for their home as its paid on connection. Business (even sole traders) get this installation fee paid and are paid a further £150 to encourage sign-up as they bring more funding into the project build.
All it takes is signing up with B4RN requesting connection and they can claim a voucher for your property you’ll be emailed back shortly after signing up and as long as you click a government link sent to you by email after you sign-up the voucher is secured for our area.
If we succeed, its the best quality internet we could ask for and rivals the best in the world! See the “Key points” on in the blue box to the right of this page.
Indeed there’s some evidence to say it would raise house prices by a significant amount (some sources say good internet adds £40,000 to a house price vs those with poor connections), So I would hope people see the value in signing up.
B4RN have stated any project that does NOT have 50% sign-up, by the deadline will NOT progress and we would have lost out.
The Final deadline for signing up for these is 10th SEPTEMBER 2021!
Sign-up on the B4RN website, just pop in your postcode!
https://b4rn.org.uk/postcode-checker/
In the governments own words the funding is there for the taking, but it is up to residents to claim this.
You can’t sign-up twice for the same property, so if you are not sure if you’ve already completed the form, you’ve got nothing to lose by filling in the above “again” B4RN would just remove your previous application.
How is your area doing?
You can click/touch each coloured bar to see the exact number of voucher sign-ups completed or needed.
BLUE bar is the number of sign-ups completed
RED is the number of sign-ups needed
A project area needs to be completely BLUE below to be able to move into the duct building phase*.
Remember you can sign-up once PER-PROPERTY, not-per person. Since the totals are based on the number of properties in each area!
*Graph is calculated as percentages of the “required 50% of number of properties per area” needed for B4RN to proceed with the project within that area.
Also, note the statistics may go up or down as we sift through and clean up the data, total sign-ups is based on B4RN’s own data
For all the prior details on government vouchers see our OLD page below. see the previous page below