Broadband (South Northamptonshire)

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Westminster Hall

16:14

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams.

Good broadband coverage is not just important for those of us who want to download films and TV shows, do internet shopping or keep up to date with the latest news; it is truly vital for those who work from home and those who run their own businesses. Broadband is a superb investment, which is projected to boost local growth across the country, with a net return of £20 for every £1 spent by 2024.

Often, however, the emphasis is on getting good coverage for towns and cities. I want to make the case that good broadband coverage in rural areas is every bit as important. My constituency, South Northamptonshire, covers 92 parishes—many of them rural—two market towns and a decent chunk of Northampton, our county town. In 2012, Northamptonshire county council undertook an open market review to determine the level of broadband coverage in the district of South Northamptonshire. The council surveyed over 38,000 premises in the district; of those, it discovered that 27,000 were identified as unserved. In 2012, then, about 70% of all premises in the district of South Northamptonshire had no broadband coverage at all.

Overall, I am delighted with the steps that both the Government and Northamptonshire county council are taking. The Government are already investing £1.2 billion to supply people across the UK with access to superfast broadband. The target set is for 95% of the UK to have access to superfast broadband coverage by 2017. The Government have acknowledged the importance of good broadband infrastructure in creating more jobs and ensuring small businesses have they support they need. I am encouraged that 10,000 homes and businesses are getting superfast upgrades each week, with that figure set to rise to 40,000 premises a week by the summer. Finally, I was delighted by the announcement, made only yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, of the allocation of an extra £250 million to ensure that all areas of the UK are able to hit the 2017 target. I certainly welcome the £3.64 million additional allocation for Northamptonshire.

The backing is there. Closer to home, I am glad that Northamptonshire county council has its own excellent plans for roll-out to deliver 90% coverage in the county by 2015. Over 50,000 premises will gain access as a result of the just over £4 million allocated by the county council, together with over £4 million from Broadband Delivery UK and an investment of £3.2 million from BT. The council reports that it now intends to go further than its initial 2015 target and is already talking to commercial providers to revisit the extent of commercial plans. The council has put aside an extra £2 million, and I am sure it will welcome the additional sum of just over £3.5 million allocated yesterday by the Secretary of State.

Northamptonshire county council has one of the most detailed “when and where” maps in the country. Although residents are aware that plans could change, that map provides the best information available on the extent of coverage, by when the coverage will be in place and how the council expects plans to come forward. Of the 27,000 properties in my constituency that were identified as unserved, the council expects that 18,500 will receive access to superfast broadband through its investment, and that of BDUK and BT. The Superfast Northamptonshire project will see another 4,175 premises in South Northamptonshire receive coverage. It is the council’s aim to secure full superfast coverage by the end of 2017.

For all that good news, full access is still a terribly long way off. I regularly receive reports from annoyed and frustrated residents in my constituency who are struggling to gain decent access, or any access at all, to broadband services. Although Northamptonshire county council has a clear and ambitious plan, it is held hostage slightly by private companies that may or may not stick to the commitments they have made.

Broadband should rightly be the domain of the private sector, so there are clear rules about how and where the public sector can intervene, but Grange Park in my constituency is a good example of an area where broadband is a major issue. The majority of the area falls within the commercial plans of BT’s provision. As it has declared a commercial interest, the county council cannot intervene with a solution as that would be in breach of state aid regulations. The county council, parish council and Grange Park residents are pressing BT to deliver on its commercial proposals and to set out a clear timetable. I understand that there will soon be a meeting with BT’s regional director for the east midlands, and I hope that they will be able to move things forward.

The problem in Grange Park is that it is a significant distance from the exchange and around a quarter of properties are served by telephony over passive optical networks—T-PON—which will not support superfast fibre-based services. A solution must be found, but it may not be simple and may be expensive. Residents believe that BT has an obligation, and that it must not step back from its proposed commercial response and transfer the problem back to the county council. A delay in securing good broadband coverage to the area and finding the additional funding, which would be needed if the problem were given back to the council, would be unacceptable.

One resident wrote to me recently explaining the issue. He fears that BT will conclude that it is not commercially viable to change T-PON to fibre to the cabinet—FTTC—which is the infrastructure that is so desperately needed. My constituent concludes that the problem is the lack of competition as BT is the only commercial provider. If Virgin, for example, had existing infrastructure in Grange Park, BT would be fighting to retain business instead of receiving the same revenue for line rental and current broadband services without having to provide any investment.

My constituent also explained that many residents have their own businesses and work from home, and that the problem is so serious for many that they may have no alternative other than to move away if it really will be 2017 or beyond before the problem is resolved. I hope that the Minister will assure my constituents that commercial companies will be strongly encouraged by any means possible to stick to their commitments.

I appreciate that BT is providing broadband speeds of up to 80 megabytes in Brackley, benefiting more than 6,500 properties, and a higher speed copper broadband speed of up to 20 megabytes, benefiting Middleton Cheney and Roade, to name just a couple of villages. By the end of 2014, its current plans will benefit communities in Paulerspury, Blisworth, Pattishall, Silverstone, Blakesley, Chipping Warden, Cogenhoe, Hackleton, Sulgrave and Yardley Hastings. That is great news and hugely welcomed, but it is of no comfort to my constituents in Grange Park, and I urge private providers to ensure they carry out their proposed investment plans.

Towcester is one of the largest market towns in my constituency, but until a couple of weeks ago, constituents were explaining to me that if they were lucky they could receive a connection speed of about 3.5 megabytes, and for some it was no more than 1 megabyte. I am pleased that because of county council investment, 10 new fibre cabinets went live on 3 February. I am delighted that the Minister was able to attend the celebration, and I hope that residents will soon experience the benefits. However, Towcester residents are still having problems with mobile phone signals, and if the Minister has five minutes to sort that out, they would be incredibly grateful.

I want to finish by mentioning the Tove valley community broadband project, which is a fantastic example of a community taking matters into its own hands. Last year, the community-based initiative celebrated its 10th anniversary of bringing an internet service to the Tove valley. Volunteers of the Abthorpe broadband association, led by Eric Malcomson, initially brought a satellite-based service to Abthorpe and later an ADSL system, but the villages now have a broadband service offering speeds of up to 30 megabytes, well above the national average, and an average of 20 megabytes even at the furthest reaches.

In the target area, 50% of households have signed up to the superfast service, well above the critical mass required to make the project financially viable. More than 225 of the 450 households have asked for the service and 208 are already connected. That was completed in less than six months since the service started in May 2013.

The communities of Abthorpe, Astwell, Bradden, Foscote, Lois Weedon, Slapton, Wappenham and Weston have benefited. I am delighted to be a resident of Slapton, so I am a beneficiary. Those connections have been completed and coverage is being extended to Helmdon. All the villages are delighted with the opportunities that connection provides, and what has been done there should be a model for future broadband initiatives in rural areas. It was an honour to be asked to open the project in Abthorpe in June 2013.

I was delighted to attend the 2013 TalkTalk digital heroes awards at the end of 2013 when Eric Malcomson, chairman of the Abthorpe broadband association, won the east midlands regional award. The award celebrates people who use digital technology to help their local communities, and Eric has worked tirelessly to deliver a fantastic service to a very rural area. I cannot overstate how beneficial the service had been to many communities. Tove valley community broadband project achieved a finalist’s position in the fixed rural networks category at the 2013 NextGen awards.

In conclusion, I congratulate the Government on the work and investment to ensure that even those in the hardest-to-reach places can access good broadband services. I also commend my own county council for its ambitious targets, and for recognising how important broadband is to rural areas. I am conscious that this must not be an attack on private providers. The investment that private commercial companies are providing is vital. However, I urge that that investment should continue and I hope that private companies will work with local councils to agree solutions and suitable timescales to deliver better services to areas such as Grange Park.

I would be grateful if the Minister explained what steps his Department can take to ensure that private companies cannot hold councils to ransom at the expense of good broadband coverage for communities in desperate need of it.

16:26

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am pleased to be speaking under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing this important debate. She is an assiduous champion of her constituents and their interests, and it does not surprise me that she seeks to draw my attention to the importance of broadband to her constituents.

Before responding to the specific issues that my hon. Friend raised, I will give a brief overview of the broadband project as it is developing. Having commissioned research, the Government know that investment in broadband pays enormous dividends in economic growth. A recent study that we commissioned showed that over the next decade every pound invested in broadband will deliver a £20 return investment. That sounds an unusually high return, but it is realistic because broadband is a general-purpose technology, which has an increasingly critical role in the day-to-day running of businesses large and small.

The bulk of that economic impact will come from improvements in business productivity and will safeguard employment in areas that might otherwise be at a disadvantage. There will be a time saving for people who will no longer have to commute, and opportunities for people to participate in the work force. The gross value added attributable to our current programme is about £6.3 billion a year by 2024, with about 20,000 jobs attributable to the programme. I have been told that increased teleworking will save around 10 million hours of leisure time every year, as well as reducing commuting costs.

We invested some £500 million in our original programme to bring superfast broadband to areas where it was not commercially viable, and that money was matched by local authorities. The total sum was around £1.2 billion. As my hon. Friend said, the Government gave Northamptonshire some £4 million, which was matched by the county council and topped up by the telecoms provider BT.

The programme in Northamptonshire, before we announced our superfast extension programme, was designed to achieve 89.2% fibre coverage, which meant that 87.4% of all premises in Northamptonshire county council’s area would receive speeds of 24 megabits and above. Some 228,000 premises in the Northamptonshire county council area will be covered by BT commercially and almost 50,000 premises—48,600-odd to be exact—will be covered by the intervention of the Government and the county council. As my hon. Friend pointed out, 18,500 premises in her constituency will benefit from the programme.

I am pleased to say that, according to my understanding, the programme in Northamptonshire is now two months ahead of schedule. It may or may not have escaped your notice, Mr Williams, that the Government were criticised some months back for the programme’s being delayed. In fact, the more one sees the programme getting under way, the more one sees that it is now beginning to exceed its targets. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, we have so far reached 3,300 premises through the scheme and we should have covered another 2,000 premises by the end of March.

The programme is very successful, not only in Northamptonshire, including South Northamptonshire, but across the country. We are covering more than 10,000 premises a week. We hope to get to a milestone of half a million premises reached some time towards the approach of summer. We hope then to be covering some 40,000 premises a week.

Let me echo the tribute paid by my hon. Friend to her county council—Northamptonshire county council. From the very beginning of the project, we wanted to partner with local councils and Northamptonshire county council has stood tall as an exemplar of a county council to partner with. Not only has it match-funded the Government money, but it has proved effective in ensuring that planning barriers were removed and in co-ordinating all the different elements that need to go into a smooth roll-out of superfast broadband. It does not surprise me at all that the programme is already ahead of schedule; a lot of the credit for that has to go to the county council.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the Tove valley community broadband project in the south of Northamptonshire. I echo her comments. That is a hugely successful project, as she said, with more than 50% of the households in its target area having signed up for the superfast service, making the project financially viable. I am pleased to say that Broadband Delivery UK and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have, in principle, approved £118,000 for the project through the rural community broadband fund. It is good to see how the local communities have worked so closely to put together the project, which will bring superfast broadband to Tove valley.

I am delighted with the excellent progress that we have seen in Northamptonshire and I look forward to the continued success of the county roll-out, which will see a further 18,000 premises passed. I am pleased that we were able to find the additional money—£3.64 million —to go to Northamptonshire as part of the superfast extension programme.

Nothing is ever perfect and I take on board my hon. Friend’s points about some of the issues that she is having to deal with in her constituency. I have to say that I have found BT to be a very good partner in terms of broadband delivery roll-out, but I hear what her constituents in Grange Park say, which is that perhaps, in her words, they are being held to ransom by BT, as BT is the only supplier.

However, it is probably worth pointing out that BT often finds itself as the only supplier in areas where other commercial suppliers simply will not compete because it is not necessarily commercially viable. She will not find Virgin Media there because it may not be commercially viable for it to compete in Grange Park. Although one finds a plethora of commercial suppliers competing for the business market, the residential market is less competitive, because, to put it bluntly, it can be less profitable.

My understanding is that in Grange Park, some 650 premises already have superfast broadband as part of BT’s commercial roll-out. A further 193 premises will get it in 2014 as part of BT’s commercial roll-out, and 77 premises in Grange Park will get it as a result of the rural broadband initiative. That still leaves some 700 to 900 premises looking for a solution, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the issue, and to do so in this Chamber. I promise her now, in this forum, that I will get back to BT, BDUK, and the county council, and work with her to see whether we can make progress on a solution.

I was also pleased to hear my hon. Friend mention mobile coverage. She rightly expected me to solve a number of problems for her in the Chamber this afternoon, so let me see whether I can oblige. I am delighted that we are now seeing the roll-out of 4G—fourth-generation technology for mobile phones. It was a fraught process to get to a position in which we were ready to auction the spectrum, but the spectrum auction went very well and we are now seeing the roll-out of 4G nationwide. That roll-out itself is set to conclude some two years ahead of schedule; the licences require 98% coverage for one licensee by the end of 2017, and my understanding is that all four main operators plan to reach that figure by the end of 2015.

I have to say to my hon. Friend that, according to my understanding, from discussions with the operators when they give indications for specific areas or constituencies of the country, we will see a significant uplift in terms of mobile coverage. Not only will 4G coverage extend mobile coverage significantly, but the roll-out of 4G will also see, as a knock-on effect and knock-on benefit, a significant increase in coverage of 3G.

Mobile coverage, alongside fixed broadband coverage, is an issue of significant concern to the Government. We are actively looking at that to consider ways in which to improve it, because what sums up the whole debate, and why it is so appropriate for my hon. Friend to have secured it, is the recognition over the past few years that good, superfast, digital communication, whether mobile or fixed, is becoming an essential aspect for almost every business and an essential part of our leisure life as well. That is why I am so pleased that the fixed broadband project is going well.

I am pleased that we are delivering in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Nothing is ever perfect and she is right to point out where there are gaps in coverage. I repeat my pledge to work with her, the county council, BT and BDUK to deal with the issues that she has raised.