Farmers left behind by empty promises

The latest setback in the struggle to improve broadband across large areas of the rural South West has Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger despairing, he tells Farming Minister George Eustice

DEAR George, If the sorry saga of Thomas Cook tells us anything it tells us that you have to move with the times and stay abreast, if not slightly ahead of the market.

If more and more people are booking their own holidays online without having to pay travel agents large amounts of commission then continuing to run a chain of high street travel agents’ shops is about as sensible as running an empire of retail outlets specialising in Victorian button-hooks, or, perhaps, fax machines.

That is why I’ve always banged on about the need for farmers to take their eyes off the furrow ahead of them and look from side to side occasionally to acquaint themselves with what’s happening in the world outside the tractor cab and to get ready to change their way of doing things if necessary.

I have to say that by and large these who have adopted this approach and diversified into activities which add value or reduce overheads – or both – have by and large done very well.

We have, as you know, a large body of farmers in the South West who have gone into specialist food production and direct selling, cutting out the various middle men to improve their bottom lines immeasurably.

And at a time when more and more consumers are looking for provenance and quality and localness, I am sure more of their colleagues are ready to take the same step, particularly at a time when it looks as though British producers will be called on to provide more of what the nation puts on its plate.

So what is holding them back? Mainly the appalling internet and broadband services which still plague huge swathes of the South West thanks to the appalling, abysmal performance of Connecting Devon and Somerset, the local authority consortium which has yet again backed a loser, now informing us all that the latest contractors signed up to deliver superfast broadband to rural areas haven’t been able to do so.

I have been trying to keep the lid on my feelings about this organisation and its history of failures, lamentably bad decisions and basic cock-ups, but I can no longer do so. It has wasted years footling around and falling down on the job while dozens of rural businesses have been left in the communications equivalent of the Stone Age.

Ultra-quality internet service is not only desirable in the business world of the 21st century, it is essential. If you haven’t got it you aren’t just handicapped, you aren’t even in the race. How galling it must be for a farmer or rural business to be left struggling with a clunking, third-rate service while the competition in the rest of the country disappears over the horizon in a cloud of dust I have no idea.

I just know how I would feel, left in the same predicament. And it wouldn’t be exactly enraptured.

I await the next announcement from Connecting Devon and Somerset as to how it now plans to fulfil the commitment embodied in its title – followed, as usual, by another admission that it can’t, after all, provide what it had promised.

Yours ever,

Ian

> Ian says appalling internet and broadband services still plague huge swathes of the South West thanks to Connecting Devon and Somerset