Stuck In The Middle of Nowhere
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- Created on 04 April 2017
- Written by Steve Burrows
Middle of Nowhere might be a bit of a cruel way to describe Horncastle, a small and ancient market town in the Lincolnshire Wolds halfway between Lincoln and Skegness and a one hour drive to the nearest motorway. With a population of under 7,000 souls it is a bit larger than the villages of Port Erin and Port St. Mary combined, but miniscule in comparison with most UK towns. There is little industry other than agricultural supplies and retail; the old grain warehouses and woollen mills have been taken over by the antiques trade, the dense concentration of antiques shops draws in coach-loads of customers in for the whole town, which retains a wide selection of small independent retailers, restaurants and coffee bars despite the dramatic depopulation of the surrounding countryside due to the mechanisation of farming in the 20th century. It is one of those quaint places where one can pleasurably mooch for hours; despite having old shops, old pavements, narrow streets etc., “regeneration” is not on the horizon and there are very few empty retail premises.
As I write this I’m sat in an old house on the outskirts of the town, visiting family, and connected to the Internet via British Telecom broadband. The Internet statistics in the house are interesting; I have repeatedly measured c. 75mbps download, 18mbps upload, and 11ms ping. On the island we are offered a maximum 80mbps download, 10mbps upload and typically c. 21ms ping. Many people who have attempted to work from home or upload multimedia files via their home broadband will recognise the significant advantage that this small, old, low-tech rural town has over the island. Rural Internet access in the UK used to be significantly inferior to that available on the island, but thanks to continuing political pressure to ensure that the economic benefits of superfast broadband are available to small towns, villages and rural areas it now appears that the UK has overtaken us.
The Isle of Man Communications Commission might dispute my opinion; rural UK still has plenty of not-spots, but the better network latency (low ping time) and faster upload speeds are both very noticeable and hugely advantageous.
Horncastle is home to what is probably my favourite guitar shop in the UK. As a spin off from the antiques trade, Old Hat Guitars is a mecca for lovers of vintage guitars and amplifiers, and regularly uploads demo videos of hugely desirable and expensive instruments to Facebook and Youtube. An Isle of Man charity I am involved in, the Manx SPCA, similarly uploads videos and photos of dogs, cats and other companion animals available for rehoming. Unfortunately our broadband connection out at Ard Jerkyll is a bit rubbish, so folks in Horncastle can upload their promotional videos approximately thirty times faster than we can from the Manx SPCA in East Foxdale, four miles away from Manx Telecom’s headquarters in Braddan. Some of our wonderful staff at the Manx SPCA simply wait until they get home to upload their videos of our animals to our Facebook pages, because our broadband is simply too poor for modern requirements. We are in the process of installing a 4G broadband connection at Ard Jerkyll to mitigate the problem, because our poor connection is a real disablement when it comes to promoting the displaced pets we have in our sanctuary who are waiting to find their “furever homes”.
When I first came to the island in 2007 the general standard of broadband connectivity was noticeably superior to the UK outside of major cities. The Isle of Man Government was rightly proud of the technology infrastructure on the island and it was a significant part of the promotion to attract technology-based entrepreneurs. It was also key to enabling me to move to the island while continuing to be an executive director of a national UK business. Ten years on and the story is very different.
Residential property prices in Horncastle are roughly two-thirds of the equivalent on the island, and I have identified a nice furnished office suite in a modern building for five pounds per square foot - less than a third of the equivalent in Douglas and under half the price I might expect to pay in Castletown or Port Erin. As a small entrepreneur looking for a low overhead location to base a technology-enabled startup or speciality retailer, the middle of nowhere in Lincolnshire would seem like a much better prospect than the middle of the Irish sea. The combination of lower domestic and commercial property costs, more vibrant retailers and superior technology clearly outweigh the island’s tax advantages.
The office suite I have identified is in the same complex as the Horncastle Technology Hub, a small facility provided by local government and part funded by the EU, which provides local small and medium businesses free of charge access to 3D printers, 3D scanners, a laser cutter, an UV printer, Virtual Reality headsets and other expensive specialist technology equipment for product design and development which would be too costly for most small businesses to justify owning without a proven business need. This technology hub is one of several similar hubs operated by onLincolnshire, an initiative by Lincolnshire County Council to encourage the better exploitation of ICT in the country and the development of more diverse and technology-enabled employment. As yet there is no equivalent on the island.
Basically, we appear to have lost our edge, at least for small technology-enabled businesses. The middle of nowhere in England has better and cheaper technology and support on offer for small and medium employers. Obviously we still have tax advantages, and in a few sectors we have regulatory advantages, but looking to the future we need to up our game.
One of the onLincolnshire broadband case studies, Vyair, a family-owned business in Horncastle which supplies specialist water filtration equipment, sums it up nicely saying: "Our whole business relies on internet sales and superfast broadband". "Over the last 10 years, our yearly takings have increased by 30% year-on-year.” "Online is our main form of sales income; in fact I would say it’s around 95% and growing, because we very rarely get customers coming into the shop.”
Another onLincolnshire case study explains how the popular gPiO Box was developed by a Horncastle entrepreneur with assistance from the Horncastle Technology Hub. The gPiO box is a control box for the Raspberry Pi, micro:bit and other micro controllers. It is designed for use in schools to make teaching the new UK computing curriculum less difficult; it is simple to use and this site has a variety of projects to help you get started.
These are good success stories for a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but hardly unique. I’ve previously written about several exemplary Isle of Man technology businesses, companies such as Ocean Web in Port Erin, Virtual Systems in Castletown, and AFD Software in Ramsey. If we want more such technology-enabled businesses to choose the island we will have to up our game and re-establish our technological superiority. Technology enablements such as superfast broadband and technology support programmes for small businesses have become an economic necessity for the creation of new opportunities and employment without special regulatory requirements.
As we look to the future of a UK which is outside the EU and can be more selective and agile about the way it approaches regulation of business, it’s probably worth reminding ourselves that the past few decades of the Isle of Man’s economic growth have been significantly based on the regulatory advantage of offering something different to the EU-bound UK. In the future it is likely that our regulatory and business taxation advantages will be eroded as the UK itself seeks to establish differentiation from the EU, so perhaps we need to improve our tech support.
The reality is that the Isle of Man’s telecoms providers have done well over the last decade. We have VDSL, 4G etc. which have been achieved without the intense political and regulatory interference that has been necessary to drive improvements in the UK. Unfortunately technology needs escalate quickly and if I were setting up a business promoting itself to the wider world by using social media to show video of its offerings I would be very frustrated by our now inferior broadband upload speeds and latency. Combine these with our high property and energy costs and I think I’d be compelled to decide that the superior technology and lower costs of operating across outweigh the delights and tax advantages of the island.
