FASTER broadband is on its way to West Oxfordshire – travelling there along the Cotswold Line Rail route.

Hugo Pickering, who lives in the hamlet of Lyneham, near Chipping Norton, has won a £1.5m grant for his company, Cotswold Broadband Group.

The money, from the Government’s Rural Community Broadband Fund, is to bring fibre optic cables to home and business owners in the district, many of whom complain of slow upload and download speeds compared to urban areas.

His plan is to take advantage of fibre-optic cables already laid along the Cotswold Line by Network Rail.

He said: “There are so-called nodes at stations along the railway line from Oxford to Moreton-in-Marsh from which we can run fibre-optic cable directly into homes and businesses.”