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Village campaign secures super-fast broadband

Ed Hansonin Lazonby
News imageBBC/Ed Hanson A group of residents wearing waterproof and outside clothing pictures at a rural location with barns in the background. There is a large roll of cable next to them. Some of those are wearing orange hi-vis clothing, suggesting they are part of the campaign to install the broadband. Everyone looks very happy.BBC/Ed Hanson
People in the Cumbrian village of Lazonby are celebrating securing better connection to the internet

Locals have helped to secure the rollout of super-fast broadband to a rural village struggling with slow internet connection.

Since November, work has been under way on a £750,000 project to lay fibre optic cables to more than 600 properties in Lazonby, Cumbria.

The work has been carried out by not-for-profit firm Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) following a campaign.

Alan Joenn said he and his wife could not run Microsoft Teams meetings simultaneously when they both worked from home and the extra bandwidth "is going to be amazing".

B4RN only installs broadband infrastructure in an area if the local community can show there is demand.

A group of 10 volunteers, led by Stan Jenkins, drummed up support for the firm to lay down cables in the village.

He said his wife, who is a rector, struggled with the area's slow internet connection.

"If you have a funeral coming up the order of service has to go to the printers - it has to be done," he said.

News imageBBC/Ed Hanson Stan Jenkins, on the right hand side, wearing a grey patterned jumper smiling. He has grey hair and sitting at a computer desk. On the left hand side is a computer monitor with a green and red bird with a long black beak picture on it. There is a pen pot on the table. BBC/Ed Hanson
Stan Jenkins said he had struggled with the area's slow internet connection

Volunteer Brett Dukes said he used to walk around the village with his border collie to help get the number of signatures needed for the work to go ahead.

"I printed a load of paperwork of the link [which contained details about B4RN] and put them in my pocket and then started to give them to people so they could go register," he said.

"I knew about 20 people [in the village] but helping the volunteers get B4RN in the village I now know about 200."

Customers pay a £60 connection fee to B4RN, and the firm then claims the money back from the government's Project Gigabyte scheme for everyone who is connected.

The scheme aims to help hard-to-reach communities access fast, reliable gigabit-capable broadband.

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