10 years on for Lancaster's community broadband scheme as B4RN marks anniversary of share launch

The event on December 15 2011 was a huge success, with the community-owned full fibre gigabit broadband project capturing the imagination of people not just locally, but around the country and the globe.

Potential investors were promised skills and jobs would be created locally. The B4RN management team back then knew the geography, people and culture with a skill set encompassing technical, legal, financial and community engagement expertise.

Prof Barry Forde, then CEO of B4RN, presented the project and share offer to a packed house, with attendees from the local community, professional organisations, journalists and industry pundits from around the UK.

The then mayor of Lancaster cut a celebratory cake and the share issue was launched, with the first cheque being presented by Walter Willcox from Surrey.

A decade on, Prof Forde has spoken about those early days.

He said: "It was a transitional day because there had been a year of solid work getting to the point where you could do a share issue and it was a sense of relief that we got through all the challenges of all the things we have to do to have any chance of building the network at all. That day was the culmination of that.

"And yes, there was big question marks: would people invest and all sorts of things like that, but we had actually done all the work – it was the transition from ‘OK, we’ve done everything we can conceivably think of to put together a viable package and right now it’s just a case of launching it and and fingers crossed, pray and and all the other things you need to do’.

"Remember, back in those days, people weren’t doing this sort of stuff. They were doing very traditional dig up the road type models or sling up telegraph poles.

"So the way we were looking at doing it was fairly radically different. But the reason for doing that was to get the cost into something that we thought was going to be affordable.

"That was a lot of work to come up with that design and there was a lot of challenge in presenting it in a way that people would not take one look at it and say we’re ‘yogurt knitters’.

"It had to be a credible technical design. And although on the one hand we had people like BT saying amateurs can’t build a network, on the other hand, nobody could actually come up with anything that was fundamentally wrong with the design, so that was very important.

"I remember having meetings with land agents and they were saying farmers will not let you go across their land, they will want money.

"I was saying ‘well I don’t believe that’ – if it’s a not for profit community project, totally inclusive – all the things that we made a big song and dance about. I believe that the local farmers and land owners will grant wayleaves and, as you know, that turned out to be true.

"You look now in 2021 and the whole world is saying you put in fibre but back in 2011, the whole world was saying no. It was only a few niche players, like ourselves.

"We were a leader in that exercise, whereas now it’s everybody and their dog is doing the same thing. It’s nice to be proved right but back then it was hard work.

"The real question mark then (and this has been the history of B4RN all the way through) is how much risk can we take? At what point can we start doing what? If you go in too early, the risk is too high. If you wait too long, you might never get there. And somewhere in between is a sweet spot where you’ve brought the risks down to an acceptable level. They’re there, but they’re acceptable, and you’re moving as fast as you can move.

"I knew what we were doing was right, but it was white-water rafting. We were heading in the right direction but we were trying to dodge the rocks and the rocks were all over the place. It was really scary.

"Somehow we managed to get through it and then we got into the more placid water without the rocks and from then on things grow."

Prof Forde said they owe a lot to the community that believed in them from the start.

"One of the things that’s different about the rural community to urban is there is a sense of time," he said. "Landowners think in much longer time frames than people in Whitehall do and a landowner will plant a tree knowing it’s going to be 80 years and it’s probably his children or his grandchildren are going to be around before they see that tree in its full majesty.

"They repair walls. They plant hedges that are going to take decades to grow. They do tend to think a lot longer term. So to actually present them with something and say ‘OK, it might be more than you need today, but in 10 years you’ll probably find it’s really come into its own and 50/60/70 years from now you’ll still be able to use it, which you won’t be able to do with these other services or need umpteen upgrades’. That actually resonates with with the farmers and rural people."

Nowadays, B4RN boasts the following:

*It has been building a gigabit (1,000Mbps) capable fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network since 2011. It reaches into very remote parts of rural Lancashire, Cumbria, Yorkshire, the north east, Cheshire and Norfolk.

*It currently has more than 9,000 connected properties and is building at pace.

*It offers 100% of properties in a community an FTTP connection, no matter how hard they are to reach, and with no additional cost passed on to the individual.

*It is a Community Benefit Society – any surplus must be reinvested back into the B4RN network or local communities.

*Community volunteers are a key part of building the B4RN network. They help to plan the route, generate interest, secure wayleaves, dig trenches, blow fibre, and connect homes.

*B4RN’s growth has been enabled through the various government voucher schemes - providing funding for each eligible property connected.

Find out more about B4RN here.