Barrasford Project – Call for Volunteers to help with house connections
I hope everyone is enjoying the sun over this bank holiday weekend. I’m sure we all need some good weather.
I want to thank everyone who’s been helping with the planning of the project so far. I’m glad to announce we’re now into B4RN’s build phase for the whole of the Barrasford project that’s all the routes between Barrasford, Birtley, Colwell, Gunnerton, and the Swinburn’s.
Thats over 75 Km2 of area covered, 4 complete routes and its B4RN’s single biggest build handover its ever done, as usually its one route at a time.
I met this week with B4RN’s build liaison in Northumberland, Hannah Robinson and along with David Ryall from B4RN we handed over to her, she’ll be in-charge of liaising with land owners before digging, as well as more complex road and bridge crossings etc. David Ryall will continue to work with the Woodburn and Kirkwhelpington projects who will connect onto the end of the Barrasford build.
Hannah has been in touch with Peter Dodd who is ready to start mole ploughing in the main routes. We’re expecting he’ll be starting breaking ground in just a few weeks. He has multiple ploughs and we’re planning to work on multiple routes at the same time.
B4RN have requested us to come live at the Barrasford Cabinet and people nearest will be able to be connected first and B4RN will blow fibre into the routes and it will circle out from there.
I hope everyone’s excited to get some amazingly good internet soon. I know I am! B4RN aim to get the main routes out from Barrasford completed before the end of the year.
Do remember B4RN will only get connections to the curtilage of properties and we still need volunteers to help out in getting connections into peoples homes, some householders will manage to dig in their own ducting and some will get a B4RN approved contractor to do this.
I’m hoping there can be lead practical volunteers in each village who can give advice to other residents on what’s possible or help those who need it in digging across their gardens. There’s going to be several community digs needed as well in each village and many hands make light work, I hope we can all help each other at these times! It’s all very practical help needed now, and its going to have a direct benefit to your village.
Barrasford village itself in particular needs some volunteers to step forward, so if there’s anyone who you know who might be able to help please do forward this info to them.
As things open up following COVID restrictions on June 21st we’re hoping this allows us to get a good start on some practical training – it will be outdoors and we’ll be walking through some house connections start to finish.
We’re hoping they’ll be volunteers who are happy for us to use their home as examples, do let me know if you would be happy for this, particularly if you live close to Barrasford Village. We’ll try and get some different examples of slightly different homes.
We’ll meet in Barrasford Village,
Monday 21st June From 10:00am – Barrasford Village
The training will last between 2 – 4 hours.
If you are not already registered as a volunteer and signed a volunteer form please complete our online form so we can note your details.
http://www.b4ntr.org/volunteer-form/
They’ll be more details to come so PLEASE do let us know if you can attend.
Lastly, don’t forget we’re still needing sign-ups for Government vouchers locally which fund the rollout throughout all the projects.
If you’ve not signed for a voucher we don’t know you want connecting and we can’t plan for homes not signed up.
Pop your postcode in after clicking the link below – don’t worry if your in a contract with another provider you can still complete a voucher request with a delayed commitment.
https://b4rn.org.uk/postcode-checker/
