VILLAGERS in Holford and Kilve have launched a campaign to get the high speed online connection needed to take their homes and businesses into the 21st century.

Current broadband capacity for the 741 exchange, which also covers parts of Nether Stowey, was described this week by Holford parish councillor Peter Grandfield as "variable and dreadful".

And he said local people were angry after discovering that the exchange was being left out of a programme designed to bring improved and superfast broadband to areas that would otherwise see no investment.

Connecting Devon and Somerset is a £95 million initiative to bring superfast broadband to rural areas in the six local authority areas of Somerset, Devon, Torbay, Plymouth, North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset.

It is funded by a £32m grant from central Government, with Somerset and Devon county councils investing a total of £21m and a further £42m from the scheme's partner supplier BT.

But Mr Grandfield said local parish councils had been told the area served by the 741 exchange was too large, its users too scattered and there were not enough users to justify the superfast connection.

So campaigners are carrying out a survey to discover just how many users there are.

"There are about 2,000 people in the exchange area and speedy and reliable access to the internet has become part and parcel of everyday life for many people," said Mr Grandfield.

"This programme is backed by an awful lot of money but we have been told that it would be too expensive for it to be rolled out to our exchange.

"It just beggars belief. Apart from the fact that people need high speed broadband for things like booking train tickets or catching up on a missed episode of their favourite TV series, children need it for school work and businesses need it.

"Every farm is a business, we have pubs and hotels, people who work from home running businesses - it's just ridiculous.

"Websites need to be run, VAT returns filed, stock movement data submitted.

"It can sometimes take around 45 minutes to upload drawings and that's if the connection doesn't drop out in the middle of it."

The survey is aiming to provide the evidence needed to put forward a case for inclusion in the programme.

Organisers want to know how many computers people have, the number of internet users and the purpose of the internet use - personal, educational, business, charitable, community service or any other reason.

Villagers and businesses in Kilve have returned around 80 responses so far and organisers are hopeful of generating a similar interest from Holford.

"Once we have the information, we hope we can make a difference to the service we use and need," said Mr Grandfield.

"I'm just indignant that we are being left out like this and we are not going to let the matter lie."

A spokesman for Connecting Devon and Somerset admitted that Holford and Kilve were not included in the current deployment plan purely due to cost.

He said providing superfast broadband across the entire area presented a number of technical and economic challenges.

"One of these is to secure the most value for public money for our programme - that means we have to make some difficult decisions," he said.

"The Holford exchange serves a number of widely spread premises, which means the programme would need to install multiple cabinets, driving up costs significantly.

"However, the programme will deliver at least 2mbps to all premises across the intervention area by the end of 2016."

The spokesman said that to enable the programme to reach 95 per cent of premises across both Devon and Somerset, the Government had announced a further £22.75m of funding, which was welcome.

"But in a time of severe public sector cuts and with the extra pressure put on local authority budgets to repair our critical infrastructure after the recent adverse weather, the requirement to provide match funding in order to access this new money will be extremely challenging.

"But we are working hard with our MPs to lobby ministers and the Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to review this issue as a matter of urgency."

Anyone wanting to take part in the survey being organised by the 741 exchange campaigners can email their information on internet use to [email protected]">[email protected].