£200K funding allocated to help Staffordshire firms access improved broadband

BUSINESSES in Staffordshire and Shropshire are to benefit from a £200,000 funding initiative to help them access improved broadband services.

Staffordshire County Council, in collaboration with its counterpart in Shropshire, has successfully bid for £214,000 from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for the project, Optimising Business Broadband.

A series of events and training programmes will take now place across the two counties to ensure businesses are well placed to take advantage of access to faster broadband,  which is being delivered as part of the national BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) framework.

The project will give businesses the opportunity to have one-to-one support from experts who will visit a firm’s premises to show how they can save money and increase productivity by using fibre broadband services.

Project team members will work with businesses until the end of June 2015, helping them to boost their turnover and efficiency using fibre based broadband.

The funding complements the Staffordshire Broadband project, which has seen Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent councils, together with the area’s Local Enterprise Partnership join forces with BDUK and BT to bring high-speed broadband to the region.

The £28m investment will result in more than 472,000 premises – around 97% of homes and businesses – having access to fibre broadband by spring 2016. Around 95% will have access to broadband speeds of 24 megabits per second (Mbps) and above.

The county council has identified access to superfast broadband as a priority for Staffordshire residents and businesses.

Mark Winnington, cabinet member for economy and infrastructure said: “Our key priority is to bring prosperity and jobs to Staffordshire and superfast broadband is a part of our strategy on achieving this.

“However, simply installing broadband isn’t enough – the ERDF funding will show businesses how they can utilise broadband to enhance the way they work, whether that’s by increasing productivity, saving money or growing their business through online sales. This funding is great news for the county and is the culmination of a lot of hard work.”