An outcry by opposition politicians has forced the Liberal Democrat run Bath & North East Somerset Council (BNESC) to review last week's rejection of £670,000 in BDUK funding (here), which was intended to help improve the local broadband ISP infrastructure with Next Generation Access (NGA) services. Instead the council pledged to spend just £25,000 upon exploring alternatives.

The money would have been taken from the government's Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office budget of £530m. It could have helped 90% of local people and businesses gain access to a superfast broadband (24Mbps+) service by 2015. However, BNESC feared that it could also incur costs of around £1 million, which made the process seem too expensive.

The move did not go down well with thirteen Conservative and one Labour member of the council, which promptly triggered an official review of the decision. According to This is Bath, a cross-party panel of backbench councillors will now examine the issue within the next two weeks.


Veal confirmed that the council would "have to put in its own funding alongside the Government investment" but stated that the benefits would "clearly outweigh the costs". A successful review could force the council into reconsidering the matter with a view to engagement with BDUK.