Littlehampton fibre broadband infrastructure works will cost council extra £240,000

A total of £240,000 will be spent on ‘ducting’ works in Littlehampton at the same time as the £6million public realm improvements.

Ducting is sunk into the ground so improvement works – which started in January – were seen as an ideal opportunity to install it.

This will provide the infrastructure needed for future connections to ultra fast internet for homes and businesses in the area.

But Arun District Council’s policy and finance committee – which approved funding for the work on Thursday (March 31) – heard that bad timing is behind the costs.

This is because CityFibre’s work to roll out a fibre broadband network did not line up with the improvements in the town.

As a result, ADC will have to foot the bill for the ducting works – something which has more than doubled the council’s contribution to the public realm improvements.

Delays or missing out are only alternatives

Director of place at the council Karl Roberts, said the alternative would be to miss out on fast internet.

“Cityfibre is working in this district putting down a new fibre network,” Mr Roberts explained.

“Now unfortunately, from a timing point of view, that hasn’t been possible to be delivered in advance of the public realm.”

He said Edburton had agreed to take on the extra work and had already laid some ducting.

Costs questioned

But both opposition leader Dr James Walsh (LDem, Beach) and council leader Shaun Gunner (Con, Rustington East) expressed their frustration over the situation.

“This is an extraordinarily large sum of money for what is relatively an extremely simple operation, given most of it’s going to be dug up anyway,” said Dr Walsh.

“It seems to me they’ve sort of got us over a barrel on it.

“Is there no room for a bit of further negotiation on this price?”

Francis Oppler (LDem, Orchard) said the cost was ‘unreasonable’ for what he described as ‘laying plastic tubes’.

Cost consultants agreed that the price was ‘reasonable’, according to Mr Roberts, who said that any further delays could see the town centre miss out on fast internet for a number of years.

Frustrations over timing

Council leader Shaun Gunner said the issue of including fibre broadband had been raised in meetings before the improvement works had started and Dr Walsh agreed that it had been raised by councillors ‘some two or three years ago’.

But Mr Roberts said that further negotiations with contractors could see the works paused.

“I’m sure members wouldn’t want the public realm works to be paused while we have that conversation,” he said.

“If we don’t do it now, then ultimately, there is a period of five years before it can be put down because there’s a moratorium on taking up the the new public realm,” he added.