Broadband Update February 2019

West Wellow 3 (WW3)

Last autumn, Mark was offered a FTTP (fibre to the property – best possible solution) Community Fibre Partnership package by Openreach for his local West Wellow 3 area. This included about 50 properties – A27 from Mill Lane towards Romsey, Pound/Church Lane & The Frenches (plus the odd anomalous property….). The cost of this was estimated by Openreach to be about £88,000 BUT it was made more attractive by some new government grants avaible to businesses and nearby residential properties. In my view (if you accept the premise that we might have to pay for faster broadband to arrive in the foreseeable future…) it was a good offer, but only achievable with a really good uptake from the included properties.

Mark and I spent a couple of months last year contacting and getting the views of all those properties included in the offer, many of which receive the worst broadband speeds in our village area. Emails, individual letters and much door knocking, resulted in about 20 residential properties and 10 businesses showing an initial interest. However this is not enough to make the project financially viable given the strict terms of the voucher scheme and the on-going complications of trying to work with Openreach and their shifting goalposts. We did not choose the properties on this quote, but were ‘given’ them by Openreach and a little googling and research indicates to me that very few, if any, projects of this size have actually been completed….. The Openreach algorithms that calculate these costings do not seem to understand rural areas and despite our attempts to liaise with Openreach it has not been possible to work out how we can tweak the scheme to make it more affordable for the majority of properties.

Lockerley 4

Excited by the seemingly ‘good’ value of the WW3 project I tried again to ask for a FTTP for a section of the Lockerley 4 area (Doctors’ Hill/Newtown road) that had a relatively high density of housing and low broadband speed. However results were very disappointing and I got sent back at quote for £400,000 which was completely unviable, and failed to make use our local knowledge and the detailed information I had sent to them.

Conclusion

Some of the village now has superfast broadband (Whiteparish cabinet) and some will hopefully get a fast FTTC solution (West Wellow 5/Mill Lane properties, new FTTC cabinet outside The Hatchett) in the near future.

In theory, FTTP schemes should not be limited by the current telephone exchange of a property and we should be able to use our local knowledge to choose compact geographical areas that would have a good uptake and lower installation costs to tempt Openreach…..but the changing staff, shifting goalposts and computer algorithms are set to thwart us and I am afraid even my optimism/determination to challenge is increasingly tinged with the realisation that most of the offers are just a publicity exercise. However, I am now told that we can include properties across exchanges for FTTP and so I plan to submit a Lockerley 4 (small area of Doctor’s Hill/ Newtown Road) request for a quote for a much smaller number of properties that I know will have good uptake and are relatively densely packed, just to see if this approach might be slightly more achievable than village-wide projects.

We have looked at using radio transmitters with Gigabeam, who were lovely and innovative but our gently rolling landscape with lots of trees is not ideal. I understand from another technically minded local resident that smaller local 5G networks might give us a solution into the future and of course there are those ‘fibre enabled’ telegraph poles and planning notices that keep appearing round the area…..

Do keep nagging our local representatives in local and national government and get in touch if you have any questions or are inspired with an idea to move us forwards.

October 2018 - Rain, rain and more rain

Well the saying "it never rains but it pours" couldn’t have been more true on Saturday morning. Having enjoyed a wonderfully warm summer the children's gardens were looking rather parched. The plants appeared thirsty, the water butts urgently needed refilling as did our pond. Needless to say on Saturday 6th October it rained and rained and rained some more, much to the delight of the children’s plants and flowers - not so much to the soggy attendees.

We made the most of the shelter the polytunnel provided by ensuring the tomatoes were picked and indoor irrigation system was working correctly (fed from the water butts outside). We even consumed our tea and cake, kindly provided by the ladies from Gilbert’s tea room, inside the poly tunnel listening to the downpour outside. During a short break in the weather, we busily collected fallen leaves from around the garden and car park. In a week or two, once the leaves have fully dried out the children will be sticking them to cardboard cutout hedgehogs providing a colourful coat of pointy brown, yellow and red ‘spikes’. Other plans we have for the coming weeks are to prepare for the children’s annual halloween party and then to ready everyone’s plots for the winter. This usually consists of removing all remaining plants and flowers and adding them to the compost heap, covering the exposed soil with cardboard to discourage weed growth and ensuring that all garden tools are clean and tidily put away in the shed ready for next year.

This year the Sherfield English Children’s Community Garden has joined the Royal Horticultural Society 'Campaign For School Gardening'. This initiative provides a chance for young people to discover the benefits of gardening, not only for them but also in their local community and the wider world. Registration has provided the children with free packets of seeds, a gardening project book and numerous factsheets to educate them in four themes of gardening around The Changing Climate, Wildlife, Growing Food For Their Plate and Creating a Happy Place. We really hope that this campaign will be running again next year as it’s helped the less knowledgable to get a better understanding around gardening techniques.

Thank you as always to all volunteers who give up their time and resources to this great local community group.

Neil

July/August 2018 - Thank you Smita!

Water! More needed! We are hoping that the pond is not quite as dry as it looks and that there is a damp refuge in the bottom where many of our pond creatures will have been able to survive. We have water butts to collect rain and these overflow into the pond. After rain last week there is a very small puddle in the bottom of the pond and the water butts are replenished. We are focussing on more rainwater harvesting; we have replaced the overflow with an old washing machine hose, acquired two new water butts and have bought some connectors to make a bigger water butt chain. It’s quite amazing how much water can be harvested from the roof of one shed and a bottle greenhouse.

The children have manged to find a little produce each week, including some delicious black tomatoes and attractive courgettes.

On the first Saturday in August we had a ‘Thank you Smita’ party as she and Krish are hoping to move north before long to be closer to family. Smita was a founder of the community garden in the village and has given her time, amazing knowledge and enthusiasm to establish the children’s garden club as a village centre of community excellence. It was lovely to see some of our past gardeners again. We wish Smita and Krish all the best for their new adventures and will sorely miss them.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be focussing on our entries for the Sherfield English Garden Show and hope to come away with some prize certificates. We hope to have seen lots of you there too.

Thank you very much to Gilbert’s Nursery for their support and children’s refreshments each week.

Best wishes, Ursula and the Children’s Garden Community Team