Dodworth Village Locals Raise GBP11k to Help BT Build Superfast Broadband

Residents of Dodworth village in Barnsley (South Yorkshire, England) have successfully clubbed together and raised £11,000 in order to help BT upgrade local telephone lines in the area with support for ‘up to’ 80Mbps capable superfast broadband (FTTC).

At present broadband connectivity in the village, which is home to a population of roughly 6,000 people, is often more likely to deliver Internet download speeds of around 1Mbps (Megabit per second). As a result local resident John Clapham has been leading a campaign to improve the situation since 2011.

Initially BT told Mr Clapham that it would not have been economically viable to upgrade the area and so he established the Water Royd and Rose Hill Broadband Campaign, which proceeded to gather petitions and local support for the project. Thankfully it worked.

BT eventually said that it could upgrade the area but only if locals helped to pay for the work. The operator committed £14650.00 towards the cost and the local council added another £3662.00 but this still left around £11,000 that needed to be contributed by residents.

Mr Clapham, with help from a few local people, then began canvassing homes for a donation of around £50 each and at the last count 235 homes had agreed to help and this has taken the total to £11,350.00 with 41 homes yet to respond (i.e. if the response from the final 41 is positive then the £50 per home requirement could be reduced).

John Clapham, WRRH Broadband Campaign Leader, said:

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved for their time and effort spent on this campaign – in such a short time we have delivered amazing results! We are on track to hit our target and hopefully reduce the household contribution well below £50.”

This is particularly important because the failure of the local £100m+ Digital Region network (here), which was initially setup as an alternative to BT but ultimately fell under the weight of massive debt after failing to secure enough customers, has meant that rural parts of South Yorkshire will not benefit from initial funding through the national Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) budget.

So far it’s taken approximately two weeks to gather all of the responses, with the amounts pledged per home varying between around £5 and up to £100 (note: most did agree to pay £50); a fairly small price to pay in the grander scheme of things.

It’s hoped that all of the funding will be gathered together by early December and after that it will be sent off to BT. No upgrade date has been set but this is sure to follow once the funding is fully received.