A PARLIAMENTARY question has been tabled by MP Rachel Gilmour following the latest debacle with superfast broadband agency Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS).

The failing agency, jointly run by Somerset and Devon County Councils, has allowed tens of thousands of rural homes and businesses across West Somerset and in the Wellington area to be dropped from plans to install hi-speed broadband.

Now, Mrs Gilmour, in whose constituency many of the properties are located, has put a question to Rural Affairs Secretary Steve Reed asking him to look into the issue.

Mrs Gilmour has also asked CDS why it cannot fulfil its name and connect Devon and Somerset premises to superfast broadband.

She said: “We have seen casework on this matter from across the constituency, and it is so disheartening to hear that more than half of the connections will now not be fulfilled, leaving families without the internet connection they were promised.

“My team and I are working with constituents who have come forward to us, to try to find the best pathway to connecting the villages and houses which have lost out as a result of the so-called scaling back.

“We hope that rural constituents will be able to use the ‘Rural Voucher’ scheme in the near future, so as to discount the price of future connections.”

The properties were dropped when CDS agreed to let contractor Airband UK ‘scale back’ its commitment after the company admitted it could not deliver its promised 55,000-plus connections.

Instead, CDS has told Airband it now only has to connect fewer than half that number.

CDS said it was committed along with Airband to trying to find ‘alternative delivery solutions’ for those communities which had been due to receive fibre broadband under the contract.

The roughly 28,000 rural homes and businesses which will now miss out include some in the parishes of: