Winchester and Chandler’s Ford MP, Steve Brine, has brought the Alresford’s broadband issues to the attention of the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport during a select committee session.
The historic market town of Hampshire has long suffered with broadband issues, including patchy service, regular outages and slow download and upload speeds. Steve Brine has spoken about the number of constituents who have raised this with him in recent years.
In 2013 the Government published the ‘Building Digital UK’ programme which over the next 9 years would see super-fast broadband access increased to 97%, as of today. To build upon this successful scheme the Government has launched a £5 billion rollout of gigabit broadband across the UK. Mr Brine has previously expressed concern that Alresford seems to have slipped through the cracks and may be left behind.
The DCMS select committee have regular sessions with the Secretary of State, to give members the opportunity to scrutinize the department and it’s work. This week saw Nadine Dorries return to the Commons committee, including the Alresford MP.
Steve used the opportunity to express his concern and raise the town’s broadband issue saying; “I have a market town in my constituency, called Alresford, which is a beautiful market town it is not a hard to reach, final 5% rural community. It is a handful of miles from the capital of Hampshire, Winchester, yet they have some of poorest broadband speeds in my constituency.
Will you please help me cut thought that situation?”
Ms Dorries gladly offered to look into the broadband issues and work the MP to rectify the issues experienced by over 4000 residents, saying; “If your market town doesn’t have it (super-fast broadband), I’d be interested to know why”, before suggesting linking Steve Brine in with her Parliamentary Private Secretary.
