PLANS to bring ultrafast broadband to homes and businesses across the Blackdown Hills are to be scrutinised by county councillors amid concern over slow progress with the project.

Hundreds of properties are due to receive a full fibre broadband service, the cost of which is being subsidised by £69 million of public funding managed by Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS).

CDS, run jointly by Somerset and Devon county councils, awarded a three-year contract to Gigaclear to deliver the network in rural areas not served by a commercial operator.

Gigaclear was tasked with connecting 20,000 homes and businesses across Somerset and 21,000 in Devon, by December, 2019.

However, Somerset county Cllr John Thorne said: “We are now nearly half-way through the contract period and I am still unaware of a single property in my division being connected.

“I am deeply concerned at the poor communications by CDS and the delays which seem to have plagued this very worthwhile project.

“That is why I have called for a report to be brought to the council’s policies and place scrutiny committee on which I sit, so that we can try to understand where we are with the rollout of the fibre broadband network.

“For months, I have been asking questions which are never properly answered, or I find information I need to know is withheld on grounds of ‘confidentiality’.”

Gigaclear provides fibre-to-the- premises broadband allowing speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) to be achieved - better than anywhere in the UK except the City of London.

At the end of 2017, CDS secured additional funding from two Government Departments to expand the network to include an extra 2,000 premises in Somerset and 4,000 in Devon.

But the extra work will be bolted on to the end of the existing Gigaclear contract, meaning those properties might not be connected until December, 2020.

Cllr Thorne said: “Overall, this is welcome news for people living and working in communities across my Blackdown Hills area.

“There are many top-class small businesses in the area who trade internationally and rely on their internet connection, as well as

thousands of residents who depend on services delivered electronically.

“Often, they are in in very hard-to-reach areas where it is not viable for a commercial internet provider to supply them with a better broadband connection, so the council is plugging as many of the gaps as we can.

“I appreciate the saying ‘better late than never’, but I am hearing serious concerns from parish councillors in my division and I am not able to fully answer their questions, so this needs reviewing as quickly as possible.”

More information about the ultrafast broadband project is available by visiting www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk.