This quarter has seen the first four projects come forward for funding from the Fastershire Community Grant which was launched in December 2020.
The four communities are very different in size, remoteness and viability. The table below details the key information relating to each project.

Community Participating Other Selected
premises benefitting Supplier Total Cost Required
with premises £’000 Funding
<30Mbps with <30Mbps £’000
Birley, Upper Hill
& Aulden 28 17 Full Fibre Ltd 196,610 192,637.08
Nash & Knill 24 7 Airband 149,533 137,533
Cinderford 87 497 Full Fibre Ltd 3,112,006 28,675
Northwick Park
& Draycott 78 110 Gigaclear 231,104 94,603
Total 217 631 3,689,253 453,448.08

Cinderford, being a small town, is the clear outlier and the exercise has done more to bring the viability of the area to the attention of suppliers than plug any major funding gap. However, it is unlikely that many similar schemes to Cinderford will come through the grant and the other three are more representative of the type of projects that will come through in the future.

Despite the disparity in cost vs benefit, each project passed the Value for Money test detailed in the Fastershire Broadband Strategy and was therefore approved.

These early projects have successfully proved the concept of the Fastershire Community Grant, enabling the project to facilitate superfast connectivity to 848 hitherto STD (Still To Do) premises, nearly 10% of the residual premises that are left without a contracted solution.