April 2016 Update

A public meeting was held at Preston Patrick Memorial Hall on 9th March and 55 people attended. Martyn Welch, our B4SW project manager, gave a wide-ranging talk on the progress of the project. His power point presentation and the question and answer discussion at the end can be seen here; there is not sufficient space in this update to describe the evening in detail. He summarised the nature of B4RN and the formation of the B4SW steering group. The group has been working for only six months but has achieved a great deal. Its success depends on three main factors: volunteers willing to do much when the digging and detailed route planning in hamlets are started; investors willing to provide the cash through buying B4RN shares and lending money as the whole project is financed locally; and landowners willing to provide free wayleaves.
 
To date, we have received 264 expressions of interest to connect to the network when it is built. This is 54.9% of the estimated 481 homes and business properties in the parishes. Considering a spade has not been put into the ground yet and the average take-up rate in the 40+ B4RN parishes is 65% after completion of their networks, our figure is very pleasing. New expressions of interest in connecting arrive on most days.
 
During the past four weeks, more landowners have been visited. There are about 83 of which 61 have been visited and 56 have agreed in principle to grant wayleaves. Five have preferred not to, so routes have been diverted around their land. We hope to finish these visits in the next month.
 
With the whole route now becoming firmer, a more detailed cost estimate has been made. We will have about 38Km of trunk (£190,000), 30Km of spurs and services (£90,000) and two electronics cabinets (£20,000). This is a total of £300,000. It has been estimated that a second cabinet to be placed at Old Hutton in addition to the one planned for New Hutton, will result in significant savings in the costs of the trunk line, and instead of the whole network being a rough ellipse, it will be a figure eight.
 
The raising of finance for the project is encouraging. So far, 85 investors have bought shares and made loans amounting to £189,100 and 42 more investors have still to be visited to discuss conversion of pledges to actual investments. SLDC has granted New Hutton Parish Council £16,667 for the purchase of the cabinet to be placed at New Hutton. The Armistead Community Fund Committee has still to meet to discuss our applications for grants. In total it has been estimated that the project still needs at least £40,000 so further offers of investments are most welcome. The total does not need to be raised before digging starts but the sooner we raise the finance the faster the work is likely to be done. We hope that digging will start in May but we must finalise the exact route before that can happen so the next steps are to continue to visit landowners and to walk the whole route to plan it in detail.