B4RN Get £100k to Bring FTTP Broadband Deeper into Ribble Valley UPDATE
Rural UK broadband ISP B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), which is a community benefit society that has deployed their 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) network to 25,000 premises across England (inc. 13,000+ customers), has secured new grant funding to help them reach more villages in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley area.
According to details released during a recent meeting of the Ribble Valley Council, some £100,000 has been approved to support several of B4RN’s deployments. The new investment forms part of £675,000 that has been committed to various local community projects (solar, broadband, EV charging, playgrounds etc.) under the Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) – this rural scheme sits alongside the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF).
The approved allocations include a £50k grant toward one of B4RN’s deployments in the Ribchester area, as well as another £50k toward similar deployments in the tiny remote rural communities of Bolton by Bowland and Paythorne.
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In addition, initially, there wasn’t enough funding available to approve all of B4RN’s applications. As a result, the operator’s application for an additional £50k in order to support their deployment of a new full fibre broadband network across Grindleton and Sawley too was not approved (here). Admittedly, this is only a small slice of the estimated total project cost of £866,800. But as per the update below, this was eventually approved at a later date.
The project team for the above application now have most of the wayleaves in place and have 183 requests for connection. The project team have secured £492,500 worth of funding from the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS). They have also raised £103,900 of private investment from local residents and businesses. With the support of the grant, the project team could have delivered on phase 1 of the project well in advance of the cut-off of March 2025 for this funding. The grant will be used to cover part of the cost of the initial network installation and will therefore meet the timescales of the grant funding.
UPDATE 3:20pm
Good news. B4RN has informed ISPreview that the grant application was finally accepted for the Grindleton & Sawley parish council build on the 27th September 2024.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Is there already suitable FTTP broadband infrastructure that ought to be shared in the Ribble Valley, rather than building more infrastructure?
Have the local community been asked if they want this infrastructure and asked how they want it to be delivered, underground cabling or telegraph poles with overhead cabling?
Will the community’s wishes be granted?
@Anon D – The details of the B4RN build model are articulated on their website. Your concerns are unfounded.
Basically, community support is central to their covering an area, and community assistance is one of the investments that they use. Their approach to obtaining wayleaves means the whole thing is trenched.
They’re one of the good boys. Unarguably the best boy, in my opinion.
B4RN don’t historically build out in areas where FTTP is already available – that’s pretty much their operating model so in respect to that question, no, there is no FTTP provision in the rural areas of the Ribble Valley where B4RN are building. I live in Grindleton and there is no FTTP (there is barely FTTC for much of the village). The nearest FTTP ends in West Bradford which is the next village along closer to Clitheroe which does have blanket FTTP coverage.
A team of volunteers has spent months personally speaking to all the local landowners and getting wayleaves in place and the response has proven there is a desire to bring B4RN to the villages both for their own benefit and for the wider community.
Regarding community engagement, again this is B4RN’s standard operating model. They have engaged with the villagers in Grindleton and Sawley. There is an appetite for B4RN because as I stated above, many villages (including farmers who need access to “usable” broadband) are underserved by BT in the villages.
A huge amount of engagement has happened in my village (and our neighbouring village of Sawley) and we continue to receive updates from B4RN on the progress of the funding round. Bolton-by-Bowland (the next village along from Sawley) has B4RN and Slaidburn (higher up than Grindleton) also has B4RN so it’s a logical step to link the two as currently Grindleton and Sawley are sat in the middle of the two networks with a decrepit BT network to suffer.