COUNTRYSIDE ALLIANCE

Now here's a great recipe - take a rural village hall on a Friday night in January, add an enthusiastic and committed MP, stir in an effective rural lobbying organisation, a sizeable, attentive and knowledgeable audience, a few cups of tea and the odd biscuit and you've got a Rural Forum.  
The brain child of Macclesfield MP, David Rutley (centre of pic)and Northern Regional Director, Simon Hamlyn (right of pic) the Countryside Alliance's inaugural Rural Forum was held on the 20th January at Henbury village hall near Macclesfield.
The objective of the event was to create a forum where David's constituents and our members could discuss key rural issues. We focussed on rural Broadband [and there are plenty of other subjects to cover] and enjoyed excellent presentations on the subject from 3 Telecom, Cheshire East Council and the Countryside Alliance, followed by debate, discussion and a robust Q&A session.
By the end of the night with our very proactive MP and a committed audience working together, we'd agreed a number of actions that David in particular could take away to work on which included fronting up BT on poor performance, highlighting the local resources available from Cheshire East council to collectively improve broadband access and speeds and to hold another Forum to check on progress.
All in all a satisfying evening, but now with a great deal of work to be done to make sure the Digital Divide in rural Macclesfield and the surrounding areas does not grow any wider.
If you've a local MP who you think would be keen on running a CA Rural Forum in your area, please do let us know so that we can help make it happen!