A NEW bid to find suppliers of superfast broadband for thousands of homes and businesses on the Blackdown Hills and other rural areas around Wellington has been labelled ‘Groundhog Day’ by Somerset county councillor John Thorne.

Cllr Thorne, who represents the Blackdown and Neroche division, said the public had heard it all before from Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS), the organisation tasked with delivering the project.

He said: “I have heard nothing from CDS that gives me any confidence they will achieve any significant success and I continue to believe that it should be scrapped and replaced.”

CDS has begun a new procurement exercise for phase two of its superfast broadband network and expects to receive final bids from qualified bidders by late summer, with contracts awarded in December.

Phase one of the network was delivered in partnership with BT and gave more than 300,000 homes and businesses access to broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

But the second phase, which started in 2016, ground to a halt in October, 2018, when delivery partner Gigaclear missed all of its targets, and the project eventually collapsed last September.

It was aimed at connecting tens of thousands of properties in Somerset and Devon which were too expensive for private broadband companies to reach without a public subsidy.

CDS has been working with Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency to secure an extension to Government funding for the programme and now has £38 million of public funds to invest in the project.

Cllr Thorne said: “Any new contractor is going to take another two to three years to deliver a full-fibre broadband network, if CDS is still aiming for a fibre solution.

“That means a great many people who should already be connected this year, last year and the year before, are going to be waiting possibly until 2023.

“It really has been scandalous how nobody seems to have taken a grip on this project until it was too late.”

A CDS spokesman said: “CDS has delivered superfast access to more homes and businesses than any other broadband programme in England.

“Nearly one million homes and businesses in Devon and Somerset now have access to superfast broadband thanks to the Government-supported CDS programme and stimulation of the commercial market which is an important element of CDS’s role.

“Of these, over 300,000 homes and businesses have access to superfast broadband as a direct result of investment by CDS.

“The whole Connecting Devon and Somerset programme is expected to deliver an £800 million boost to the regional economy.”