Dan Poulter blames Jeremy Pembroke and County Council for Broadband bid failure

Dr Dan Poulter MP

Suffolk woke on Friday to hear that our much needed bid to improve broadband provision for businesses in the county had failed. Up the road in Norfolk, to add insult to injury, they were celebrating the success of their bid.

Dan Poulter, MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich is fast getting a reputation for providing strong support to his local constituents for example on the issue of libraries and Andrea Hill. He has not hesitated to criticise Conservative colleagues when necessary and yesterday he continued that trend when he laid the failure of the bid on the shoulders of Jeremey Pembroke and the previous Conservative administration of Suffolk County Council.

Dr Poulter is quoted in the EADT saying:

A lot of businesses signed up for the bid but the council didn’t commit. I had three meetings with Jeremy Pembroke but he didn’t seem to understand the problem. We always thought that was the bid’s weakness.

It was reported earlier in the week that since Mark Bee's election as Leader there had been a change of heart at the County Council and they have now pledged to support the bid with the Cabinet approving proposals to spend £51,000 a year for the next four years and to make a capital grant of £235,000 in the new technology.

But sadly this comes too late for this round of bidding and just goes to show how out of touch the County Council has become. Judging from what I saw at the full council meeting this week Mark Bee has a steep hill to climb to bring Suffolk County Council into the 21st century but I am encouraged the Council is backing this bid and all of us in Suffolk should now get behind the next bid.

This just goes to show the importance of having a strong and supportive County Council that understands what is actually going on in the county. I am going to blog a bit later about some of the reasons (and these are not party political) why I think the Council is so out of touch and what can hopefully be done by all parties in the run up to the 2013 elections to ensure we elect a better Council of whatever political balance.