Update from Connecting Cheshire

Hello everyone, I have a little bit of information I would like to share with you on the broadband situation.

I have been on the phone with Narvin Sankersingh who is in charge of build preperations. He has informed me that the reason the Connecting Cheshire website has not been updated in over 12 months was down to people leaving who were in charge of doing this and they have not had anyone in to keep it updated.

As some of you may know, in mid 2019 there was a consulation period with all the local and national broadband providers to establish who would be interested in carrying out the next phase of the broadband build in Cheshire. It might not surprise you that Openreach was one of those.

Connecting Cheshire have £4.5m of investment to hand out after a bid process which will happen tomorrow. Once this is complete, November will be the month where CC will award the work, we then wait until the 2nd quarter for work to commence.

I have to mention at this point that there is nothing to suggest that our area will be considered in any of these builds. I have asked Narvin to speak establish the where and when for me. We will await his response.

Something also to note, Narvin checked my home postcode and according to their database, CC have classed my property as a grey area.

I need to clarify the colour scheme here, GREY means 'not in scope for any build due to already been invested in OR is being thought about and WHITE means 'no investment so far and a focus for the next phase'. Area's recorded as white will be the focus of this next award.

After running a test on my property, Narvin was surprised to see that my property should be classed as white and not grey as his records show. This may mean that for many of us we are being placing in the wrong colour. This also seems to me to be poor investigation work on CC's part way back when.

I still believe we need to continue with the Community Partnership with Openreach and we need to keep our ear to the ground also with regards to CC and their future builds.

Once I have more information, I'll be sure to share this with you.