Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many rural communities have launched their own initiatives to install fibre networks as a result of commercial and government programmes being unable to reach their premises.
Answered by Rob Wilson
Broadband Delivery UK has recently published information and guidance for communities on implementing their own community projects, with examples of schemes that it is aware of (available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-led-broadband-schemes). There are also other examples of community broadband support such as Community Broadband Scotland, which gives specific support to community projects in Scotland. The government does not, however, hold information on all community schemes in the UK.
Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to support tourism through increasing the number of UNESCO-recognised World Heritage sites in the UK.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
World Heritage Sites are internationally recognised. As a result, they attract visitors from near and far.
In July, the Gorham Cave Complex in Gibraltar became the UK’s 30th World Heritage Site. I very much hope to see the Lake District become our 31st in 2017.
The Prime Minister’s Tourism Action Plan sets out how we are working to make it easier for visitors to travel around our country and discover these sites for themselves.
Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what the level of take-up was for superfast fixed broadband in each parliamentary constituency in the latest year for which figures are available.
Answered by Matt Hancock
We do not hold take-up data at constituency level.
Take-up in the areas covered by the BDUK projects is available at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hs00bNsyRV1WoOt-fow3rsNXzpcKg26AsOWvk1bvJRk/edit#gid=0
Ofcom’s, “Connected Nations 2015” publication indicates that “one in three homes had ‘superfast’ broadband with a connection of 30 Mbit/s or more" in May 2015.
Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many young people in Bury St Edmunds constituency participated in the National Citizen Service in each of the last two years.
Answered by Rob Wilson
I am pleased to report that over 1,000 young people in Suffolk have participated in NCS in the past two years. The NCS Trust does not collect data at a constituency level. Therefore, the figures below are for the local authority area of Suffolk.
2014 – 328 participants
2015 – 710 participants
Asked by: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to increase broadband coverage and speed in Suffolk and the East of England.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The Government has committed £26.68 million to the Suffolk broadband project. The current contracted coverage is to provide superfast broadband access to 117,493 homes and businesses in the county, extending coverage to nearly 91% of premises. Procurement is still under way for part of the funding and coverage will be extended further once contracts are agreed. As 30 June 2015, the Suffolk project had covered 84,447 superfast premises.
Over £81 million of government funding has been committed to improving superfast broadband coverage in the East of England (including Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes). This will support delivery of superfast broadband to 642,160 homes and businesses in the region that would otherwise not have gained coverage.