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What do we pay our council tax for?

"Three groups of local authorities, however, are categorised as “making insufficient progress” by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said he will meet urgently with Liverpool, Knowsley, St. Helens, Sefton, Wirral"

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Personally I think there's more important things to spend the Council Tax on than broadband

Can't wait for this, I work for the council and am having to use a 10 year old laptop running IE6!
The upgrade of tech will mean that I don't have to wait 20 minutes for the thing to boot up.

Sorry misread that into local authorities needing to improve their own internal IT systems. Which they do!! ;-)

"The move could jeopardise plans for superfast broadband in 90 per cent of the UK by 2015, as well as a basic requirement for 2mbps broadband being available across the country.

Additional European funding, however, has also been secured to improve the UK broadband network. A further £100million is now available to add to the UK’s £630m investment."

Quite how this works I don't know, how did Councils become responsible for rolling out broadband at all?

Glocko - if you lose 20 minutes every time you fire up your works 'puter and the speed it works at is also below par, your potential lost working time (= money) would pay for a new bit of kit inside a month. Looks like your department has a budget failure.

What do we pay our Council Tax for, you ask?

I can tell you what I don't pay mine for... super-fast broadband! (I pay Virgin Media for that!) I am not aware of the lack of super-fast broadband being a problem in Wirral, and don't believe the Council and its officers should spend their time on this matter.

Did anybody reading this post access the web via dialup today? Didn't think so!

Perhaps I have missed the point. If I did, it would be because the article was very badly written and failed to explain the facts surrounding why the funding was provided and exactly how Councils are failing. Lazy reporting on a non-issue in my book. (Did anybody else notice the photograph of The Albert Dock was approx 10 years out of date... lazy lazy reporters).

Whats broadband to do with the councils, oh yes that 50p tax on each none mobile telephone bill that was removed from our pockets without asking, for poorly served country areas you understand, it's a commercial decision by BT and other comms companies so why doesn't the guy ask them what's going on, we've not heard how the BT Greasby high speed experiment has got on.

Agree. I'm on the Broadband And Anytime Calls package via BT. This week my speed increased from 6mbps to over 10mbps and that's just on the standard service. The national average is 7.58mbps http://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband-speed-test

I would rather them funding an upgrade to the IT infrastructure that some of the stuff they currently spend their money on.

Alot of business make decisions about their locations based on Communications infrastructure, if there isn't a very good infrastructure, who is going to want to move to the area.

I guess it it investment in disguise because at the end of the day the internet isn't just about porn any more it is an essential part of life.

Which I.T. infrastructure are you referring to? BT? Sky? Virgin Media? There is no public I.T. infrastructure to my knowledge. If you get your internet access via "WBCNet Broadband" (yes I made it up) then I would be interested to hear about it.

I agree that communications by businesses rely upon broadband/internet... and don't see how this is anything to do with WBC, or why they should spend their time worrying about it. If I decide to locate my business in Wirral, I will contact a telecomms supplier, such as BT, and pay them for my telephones and internet. I wouldn't be paying Wirral Council for my broadband connection would I? Broadband can be accessed in ALL parts of Wirral as it stands - not sure what the beef is... still!