Full fibre ultrafast broadband scheme to go ahead – but action is still required to ensure it happens – Brightling, East Sussex – village website

I am very pleased to announce that Openreach have been persuaded to go ahead with the build of full-fibre ultrafast broadband for nearly all the properties in the Brightling / Woods Corner / Netherfield Village area, even though we didn’t actually hit the fund-raising target that we were originally set.

Important: everyone who pledged their government (DCMS) voucher now needs to validate it – otherwise the scheme is at risk of not going ahead. Read on for how to validate your voucher.

If you pledged your voucher to the scheme, you should have by now received an email from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) asking you to confirm some details. If you haven’t seen the email, please check your email inbox and junk folders. The sender address will be gigabit.vouchers@notifications.service.gov.uk The email will look like this:

If you pledged and haven’t received the above email, then please email highwealdsuperfastbroadband@gmail.com

If you have any problems or questions filling in the validation form, then please email highwealdsuperfastbroadband@gmail.com

If you pledged as a business, then the validation form will have extra questions. Follow this link for further information: Help with the extra questions for business and sole traders.

What happens next?

Providing that enough people validate their vouchers, the build will start and everyone who is in the scope of the scheme should be able to receive full fibre ultrafast broadband in about 12 months time, provided there are no problems along the way. If you are not sure whether you are within the scope of the scheme, then then please email highwealdsuperfastbroadband@gmail.com (if you have received the email requesting validation, then no need, you definitely are included in the scheme).

Missing properties

A very small number of properties have been omitted from the scheme. BT-Openreach says that this is for reason of cost, and that if they were included, none of the scheme would go ahead. We are in the process of disputing this, as Openreach’s numbers do not seem to make sense.