In the past year or so we've had similar reports from residents in Castle Eden so we raised the issue again with the Digital Durham programme team at county hall. We received the following response on Friday:
Good
Morning Cllrs,
There
is only one cabinet in Hesleden that has not been upgraded to fibre and that is
Wellfield cabinet 9, so I would presume that the residents who have contacted
you are connected to it.
Cabinet
9 is not being upgraded under the council’s Digital Durham programme. It is
planned for upgrade under BT’s own commercial programme. The difficulty we have
is that under state aid legislation we can only invest public money in areas
that are outside of the commercial broadband providers plans. This means that
we aren’t able to fund the upgrade of this cabinet under our own plans.
Whilst
we do our best to influence the continuation of the commercial fibre broadband
roll-out, ultimately the decisions made on BT’s programme are their own.
Unfortunately as such they aren’t at liberty to provide us with a great deal of
information.
As you will see from the response received the problem with slow broadband connection speeds is connected to cabinet 9, which is within BT's own commercial programme, and as such lies beyond the influence of Durham County Council.
However we intend to contact the regional Partnership Director of the BT Group to make further representations on behalf of the residents of Hesleden and Castle Eden.
We will keep you informed of developments in due course.
