West Yorkshire village to receive superfast broadband after signing new deal with BT

A West Yorkshire village is now set to receive superfast broadband following a campaign for faster speeds.

More than 90 households and businesses in the village of Ledston, near Castleford, will be able to order new high-speed fibre broadband services for the first time after a deal was reached between the community and BT.

The co-funded deal at Ledston is expected to see the first residents get the higher speeds within the next 12 months.

This new deal is part of BT’s Community Fibre Partnerships (CFP) programme, which has already seen BT sign agreements with more than 200 communities and organisations to bring fibre broadband to some of the UK’s most challenging areas.

The cost of delivering the new technology has been covered by Openreach, BT’s local network business, the Government’s Better Broadband Subsidy Scheme, which supports households and businesses with speeds of less than 2Mbps which are not covered by any current fibre broadband rollout plans, and BT’s CPF grant scheme.

The CFP programme offers grants of up to £20k to any community in the final 5% of the UK not covered by any fibre broadband roll-out plans if the technology will also benefit a local school or similar organisation.

BT awarded a grant of more than £3000 for the Ledston project because the village school, Lady Elizabeth Hastings Church of England Primary School, will benefit from the boost in broadband speeds.

Tom Keeney, chairman of BT’s regional board in Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “We are working with communities, such as Ledston, up and down the region.

“Rolling out fibre broadband to as many communities as possible is one of our top priorities and working directly with a group of residents like this is just one of the ways of making that happen.

“People here have shown great determination to go ahead with this exciting project. Fibre broadband opens up endless opportunities for those living here. Our ambition is to ‘never say no’ to any community that wants superfast broadband, and we’re really pleased we found a way forward in Ledston which testifies to that approach.

“We’re keen to have conversations with other communities who might benefit from this programme.”

Kim Mears, Openreach’s managing director for infrastructure delivery, added: “It is great to be able to work with communities like Ledston, to find a fibre broadband solution. We’re working on hundreds of similar community fibre partnership programmes across the UK, which are bringing faster fibre internet access to even more homes and businesses.

“Openreach is committed to making fibre broadband as widely available as possible in the UK to allow families and businesses to do even more online.”