Graffham MP hears how Full Fibre is helping Sussex village
Hundreds of homes and businesses in Graffham can now upgrade to Full Fibre
MP for Arundel and South Downs, Andrew Griffith visits Graffham to find out how working together has brought ultrafast broadband to a rural village.
Andrew Griffith MP met Openreach engineers and local business owners in the village of Graffham to learn about the impact ultrafast Full Fibre broadband is making in his constituency.
A Fibre Community Partnership programme has upgraded more than 300 homes and businesses in the area, after locals used the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, alongside a contributions from Openreach and West Sussex County Council, to help fund the village’s digital transformation.
Meeting with the MP at the Foresters Arms, the Openreach team was able to explain how build in rural areas is happening alongside urban and coastal work.
The visit was hosted by Kieran Wines, Openreach’s Regional Partnership Director, who said: “We welcomed the opportunity to host to Mr Griffith to show how great partnership can support upgrading connectivity for harder-to-reach communities like Graffham. Our engineers work hard every day to keep communities across West Sussex connected, and it was great to be able to share the challenges and realities of delivering this technology.”
Andrew Griffith MP for Arundel and South Downs said: “Decent, fast and reliable broadband is absolutely vital. Coming to politics after a business career, it was always going to be one of the top things I tried to deliver – working to support local residents like Simon, Mark and Bridget who led this project on behalf of the Graffham community.”
Simon Longman, the community lead who kick-started the project in Graffham along with Mark Stewart and Bridget Alder, and who co-ordinated communications between Openreach and local residents, said many homes, particularly on the outskirts of the village, had poor broadband speeds before the arrival of Full Fibre. “Being a professional working from home, it made video calls quite difficult,” he added. “We also couldn’t take advantage of the modern streaming services. A lot of people in Graffham are professionals. They couldn’t replicate working in the office with working at home – they can now. They get the same speeds. It’s been invaluable to the businesses, the farms, the pubs, the professional people who live here.”
Gregory Merrett, Project Manager, Digital Infrastructure Team, West Sussex County Council, said, “We’re delighted that Graffham residents are amongst more than 10,000 homes and business in the County which are now enjoying all the benefits of Full Fibre broadband thanks to West Sussex Council’s generous top up to the Gigabit Broadband Voucher scheme, working with suppliers such as Openreach.”
Antonia Jamison, owner of Westerlands, a regenerative farm and hospitality business which offers accommodation and experiences for visitors to the South Downs National Park, echoed that sentiment: “It has been very difficult to operate our business without this new level of connectivity. We couldn’t even download bank statements or upload photos. Our corporate clients expect high speed internet access which we haven’t been able to offer until now. This has been hugely transformational for us and we can’t thank Openreach enough.”
With download speeds of 1Gbps, Full Fibre is up to 10 times faster than the average home broadband connection. That means faster game downloads, better quality video calls and higher resolution movie streaming. You can also use multiple devices at once without experiencing slowdown – so more people in your household can get online at once.
Openreach is working to build and connect customers to the company’s ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband network - which is on track to reach 25 million homes and businesses by December 2026.
Residents and businesses can use Openreach’s fibre checker to see what infrastructure is available at their address.
