Timescales and the importance of local businesses
Jan 13, 2014From the point of view of deploying new technology to help achieve better coverage, next year – 2015 – is looking to be the year of SFBB for the Parish. However, we have an opportunity to bring the timescale forward a bit by making sure local businesses in the Parish are involved.
This comes about because one of the Connecting Cumbria funding streams is through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and this has to be spent by the end of April 2015. The funding is available to help eligible local businesses get SFBB. Any infrastructure put in for this purpose is also likely benefit the development of SFBB in the Parish as a whole.
The eligibility criteria are complex so our best plan of action is to identify all the businesses in the Parish, how big they are and their broad area of operation and then let the Connecting Cumbria team work out if they can draw down ERDF funding.
This is where we can all help. I’ll publish a simple proforma in the next few days on this blog and circulate the details to those for whom I have e-mails so we can capture this information. Let’s see if we can bring forward the planned SFBB implementation in the Parish.