Parish Council chair Jon Morris and Littlehempston webmaster Mike Thomas had an e-mail from Michelle Maidment, our contact at Openreach, on the 9th September saying that they “…are definitely going ahead with the scheme…” to bring fast fibre broadband to Littlehempston. Her e-mail also confirmed that the cost of the project would be covered by the vouchers issued by the government (so not our parish council!). She pointed out that anyone who has requested and confirmed a voucher with DCMS, but doesn’t take out a fibre broadband contract once the system is installed, may be asked to reimburse the value of the voucher to Openreach.
Michelle also introduced us to Tayler Dan, an Openreach Fibre Delivery Support Clerk of Works, and Jon and Mike met up with Tayler in the Tally Ho car park on 17th September. Tayler told us that surveying one of these projects normally takes a couple of days, but the Littlehempston project is one of the most complicated he’s come across, and they’ve been working on it for weeks.
He explained that in several places in Littlehempston the existing copper telephone cables had simply been buried underground – not run through conduits, just buried. That means those routes are unusable – particularly the route followed by the telephone cables going to Hampstead Manor and nearby properties, as those cables come from the A381 road and are buried under the mainline railway.
So Openreach need to erect new poles for overhead lines and install conduits for underground lines in some parts of Littlehempston. They also need to install boxes on the outside of a couple of buildings. All of this work will require wayleaves, where the landowners grant permission for the work to be carried out on their premises, usually in exchange for payment.
Meanwhile we’re also still in touch with fibre broadband supplier Airband whose project covers most of the Littlehempston properties that aren’t included in the Openreach scheme, and many other properties in adjacent parishes.