Over a hundred villagers came from all over the Blackdown Hills, to a special meeting, held in Upottery village hall on Friday to voice concerns about superfast broadband.

The Government has invested £1.2 billion in the project nationally with 40,000 additional households and businesses being connected per week by the summer.   Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) is on track to deliver superfast broadband to 90% of premises across Somerset and Devon by 2016 with new cabinets going ‘live’ each week.  However, locals in remoter rural areas including Churchstanton and Otterford  are concerned that they may fall into the 10% of households that may not be covered by the first tranche of the programme.

Local people, shop owners, farmers and other business people raised concerns that current slow computer speeds were hampering their businesses and some stated that without superfast broadband their properties could be blighted:

"It will put us on the wrong side of the rural divide if we cannot be served with superfast broadband,’ says Graham Long, Upottery Parish Councilllor, ‘we pay the same taxes as the people in Taunton and we deserve the same service."

Rebecca Pow Prospective Conservative MP for Taunton Deane was at the meeting and is adamant that the rural areas must be heard:

"I can appreciate the strength of feeling over this issue. Whilst it is great news that superfast broadband is being rolled out so efficiently across the Taunton Deane constituency we do need to speak up for the few areas that may fall through the net initially. "

"Superfast broadband is a vital tool for businesses, for every £1 invested in it, it is anticipated that business will grow by £20 so we must make sure our rural businesses are connected in some way whether conventionally or using other methods. We cannot allow them to stagnate whilst other areas just down the road thrive."

Speaking for BT, who are installing superfast broadband, Laurent Boon, assured the audience  that all communities will at least be assured of speeds of 2MBs by 2016:

"Some areas, like Smeatharpe require over 3 km runs of cable from their local exchanges at Churchstanton and Upottery making it very costly to install superfast broadband.  So we are also looking at wireless solutions for some difficult areas, small cabinets and repeaters. We don’t want to see any areas missing out and the Government has just increased its funding by and extra £250million."

There is also an additional £10 million available for pilot projects for alternative methods and Connecting Devon and Somerset boss, Kerri Denton promised to ensure she obtained some of this funding for rural areas.

Speaking on behalf of Otterford Parish Council, Mike Canham said, "People and parishes in the Blackdown Hills are going to need all the help they can get to see meaningful improvements in broadband speeds. We will continue to push BT for more information about the Churchinford and Buckland St Mary Exchanges - both serve areas of Otterford."

Chairing the meeting MP, Neil Parish, summed up the evening by giving a commitment to raise the rural concerns about superfast broadband  whilst taking a realistic approach:

"We have to work together on this with our county councillors and BT and CDS.  It was always going to be difficult in the Blackdowns and we want to make sure you do get much faster speeds. I will speak to Ministers and we must try to get some of the extra money available, harness other technologies or look at other options such as communities arranging their own solutions. I will go to the Ministers on this."