Broadband (Cheltenham)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood]

Thank you.

The problem that people face is that they are falling between the gaps. Fastershire is providing a roll-out programme that is overwhelmingly geared to rural areas, but even after the open market review had shown that there were gaps in urban Cheltenham, it has not identified an immediate way in which to deliver a decent broadband service or access to superfast broadband in the areas that have been left out. We are finding increasing numbers of such areas, in Benhall, The Reddings, Up Hatherley, Springbank and Battledown. Only last week, I discovered a new area in the St Paul’s part of town, where a brand-new estate is without decent broadband services.

New estates, or those filling in between older areas, seem to be one of the key problems, and where the service has not been provided. That might be an historical pattern of some sort—perhaps no dedicated BT cabinet, or a cabinet used to serve a smaller number of premises—but whatever the reason, people find it extraordinary that they are moving into brand-new homes in which the developers have not bothered to ensure broadband services. People then find that they fall between the gaps, with BT or other commercial operators saying that such a service is not commercially viable and Fastershire saying, “Sorry, guv, it’s nothing to do with us, you’re outside our approved area.” Fastershire is conducting a new open market review, but if some of those problems of communication between it and the commercial operators persist—if we repeat the problem of information being provided by postcode, when services are provided by cabinet, street or individual premises— we might find yet again that gaps emerge and households are left out.

I have a few things to ask the Minister to have a look at. First, on planning and building regulations, if we are so ambitious as a Government to deliver superfast broadband across the country, it seems wrong that we are allowing new estates to be built without the provision of proper broadband services. That is something that could be tackled. I know that councils are wary these days—with due reason, in some cases—of imposing restrictions on developers and conditions on planning consents that might be seen to be unreasonable or threaten the commercial viability of a housing development. I would like the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to see whether we can reassure councils that it will be regarded as reasonable, and that they will not be challenged, if they insist that those developing new developments have to put in decent broadband services and, if necessary, pay BT to connect the local cabinet to the option of superfast broadband.

The second thing is for the Minister to go, at national level, to BDUK and the various commercial providers —mainly BT, but also Virgin, EE, TalkTalk, Sky and others—to try to resolve these issues about communication, and about the basis on which the maps are drawn that decide what is commercially viable. It would be reasonable to knock some heads together and say, “Listen, it is completely unacceptable that you all have the information, but each side is blaming the other when it comes to how the information is provided.” Fastershire in Gloucestershire told me that it was provided with information by BT and the others only on a postcode basis, so that was the only basis on which it could draw its maps. BT insists that Fastershire has all the information it needs to fill the gaps. They cannot both be right. The Minister needs to sit down with BDUK and the commercial providers to knock heads together and find out why Cheltenham and, presumably, other urban areas right across the country have so many gaps in the roll-out.

We need to offer a bit of challenge to some of the commercial operators. At least behind closed doors, we need to remove the cloak of commercial confidentiality and ask exactly on what basis they are judging whether an area is commercially viable. On some occasions, the operators have suggested to people that if they could raise the money themselves—that would effectively add a subsidy through the community—they could have the option of connecting to superfast broadband. If a community is willing to raise that money to subsidise superfast broadband, presumably they would be willing to pay the premiums required to upgrade to it, which implies that it would be commercially viable to go into that street or estate. I am still not clear whether the poor service that some areas get is part of the consideration, or whether BT is doing a tick-box exercise using the area’s demographics, house prices, topography and so on. The decisions seem to be fine judgments in some cases.

There are a few bits of good news. For example, BT and Fastershire have been prepared to talk about these issues and, I think in both cases, are generally committed to removing the embarrassing gaps in the programme. There are some good news stories where community effort has resolved the issue. Cabinets 124 and 214 in Cheltenham are, in different ways, good news stories. In one case, the community persuaded the developers of a new estate to underwrite the cost of putting superfast broadband into their local cabinet, so that cabinet should be okay. In another case, the community persuaded BT to shift the cabinet, apparently to make the viability more commercially promising. BT is therefore including that in its roll-out plans.

We still have a number of other cabinet areas that have been left out. I am notified weekly of new streets where people are getting poor service. Going back to the original problems with the centralised exchange, poor service is particularly hard to take for those who live in the areas that were most distant from the old exchange. In some parts of Cheltenham, people in one street have a service of 0.5 megabits a second, which is an unconscionably slow service, while only yards away people can get 25 to 30 megabits a second and have a service that is 60 times better. That is pretty hard for people to understand and accept.

I do not expect the Minister to have an instant solution. I realise that there are complexities around state aid rules and the planning of these programmes over many years, but I do not think we are likely to meet our ambition as a Government to supply at least 90% of the population with access to superfast broadband by next year, and to supply everyone with a service of at least 2 megabits a second or better, if areas such as Cheltenham are not meeting the targets. I would like him at least to recognise the problem, and to promise to get the commercial providers, the roll-out programme for BDUK and programmes such as Fastershire in Gloucestershire together to try to establish what information can be shared on a rolling basis, so that we can ensure that these gaps do not continue to emerge in the delivery of broadband.

The Government have rightly prioritised the issue. The calculation is that superfast broadband could be worth £400 million to the Gloucestershire economy alone. To the country as a whole, it is economically vital. It is part of our future and our competitiveness as a 21st-century nation. We have to do better for some of my constituents.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on the way in which he addressed the House this morning, and in particular on starting the debate by demonstrating what the human form of superfast broadband might look like. For one dreadful moment, some of us thought that he might be the replacement for the right hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) in the Home Office, but I am delighted that he has managed to be here. His constituents should know that he made his whole speech without referring to any notes. Having listened to a lot of his speeches, may I say that he speaks rather better without notes than he does with brief supplied to him?