MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has called on the Government to ‘bang heads together’ at the agency charged with delivering high-speed broadband services to West Somerset.

His demands follows the release of a Commons report showing his constituency languishing in the lower reaches of the league table for broadband speeds.

It was officially classed as among the 100 most poorly served constituencies - largely, said Mr Liddell-Grainger, as a result of successive failings by Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS), the consortium of local authorities charged with delivering the improved service.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said: “In larger centres of population such as Bridgwater and Minehead broadband speeds are excellent.

“It is when you get into the rural parts of the constituency that the problems start to become apparent, and the more remote the location the greater they are.

“There are hundreds of rural families still stuck with broadband speeds which are distinctly last-century.

“This is bad enough for private users.

“But scores of farmers and other rural businesses are stuck in a time warp as far as communications go.

“There are statistics to show this is having a severe impact on trade, losing many businesses orders and even customers because they cannot communicate as effectively and quickly as urban-based competitors.”

Mr Liddell-Grainger said it was always going to be a challenge to deliver fast broadband to remoter rural areas, but reaching such places was supposed to have been a priority for CDS.

He said: “Unfortunately, since we fell into its clutches we have witnessed a shoddy performance of broken promises and missed targets, while I could paper the walls of my office with the procurement contracts it has handed out.

“It is galling to see communications standards in the rest of the country surging ahead while places like Exmoor are left trailing well behind.

“The Government has got to get to get involved here and bang some heads together at CDS, which I now regard as standing for ‘Connecting Directly, Sometime’.

“In this case ‘directly’ is used in the Westcountry sense, the equivalent of ‘mañana’ - though without implying the same sense of urgency.”