What jonny said. It was a joint venture. The council stumped up some of the start-up costs, the company the rest.
So if it fails the tax payer is down £4.5m and then the council will be bleating about how they have to cut costs and increase council tax due to losing that money, but isn't the point that they should have consulted taxpayers before using 'our' money.
Where has this money come from, is it being taken from areas that they are proposing cutting ?
If this project was that good why wasn't any multi-national's falling over themselves to get involved with it.
Have they given details on when they expect a return on the money, not as far as I'm aware, and what they have done to ofset the losses, I will give them credit if this takes off and earns a huge profit but at the moment I can't see it there is too much competition for broadband wifi access that bundles in other things like Sky for example to make it cheaper