MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has launched a blistering new attack on the organisation tasked with delivering ultra-fast broadband to rural homes across the Wellington and West Somerset areas, Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS).

It comes six weeks after Mr Liddell-Grainger, who currently represents West Somerset but will be the Conservative candidate for the new Tiverton and Minehead constituency taking in much of the area around Wellington, told the Government it needed to ‘bang heads together’ at CDS.

Mr Liddell-Grainger was speaking in the House of Commons during a debate he secured on the Government’s Levelling Up agenda when he called for CDS to be scrapped.

He told MPs: “Levelling up means many things, but until the unequally treated rural parts of the South West realise what has to be done to fight for fairness, they will founder.

“Yesterday morning, for example, I received a self-congratulatory letter from Project Gigabit’s Minister of State telling me about the wonderful developments of bringing ultra-fast broadband to the extremities of Somerset and Devon.

“I laughed out loud.

“There was no encouraging news for either of the counties.

“This is partly because broadband rollout has been left in the incapable hands of ‘Project Useless’, otherwise known as Connecting Devon and Somerset.

“CDS is a typical council cock up. It was designed, if that is the word, by someone in a hurry and without a fully functioning brain.

“There does not seem to be anybody on board capable of understanding the technology or writing a contract.

“As a result, they have committed millions in public money to companies who could not deliver.

“Now, CDS is still failing to deliver. They are years behind schedule.

“Do not bother storming round to the CDS office. There is not one.

“CDS is run part-time by councillors from across the two counties and employs only a handful of council employees, for part of the time only, of course.

“It should be wound up, scrapped, gotten rid of, as soon as possible.”