HornetUK, I am also in the Beds area, and was having utterly crap web browsing for the same period of time. I just started trying some of the proxy servers that are listed (not sure what the link was atm). I finally found one that makes browsing very good. But I don't want to have to use a proxy, I never had to before
Anyway, just give a couple of different proxies a go (none of the luton/beds proxies worked for me...ended up using an oxfordshire proxy...)