Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans his Department has to incentivise housing developers to ensure that all new homes can receive fast broadband.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is strongly committed to ensuring new build developments have high quality, reliable and future-proof connectivity.

In early 2016, DCMS brokered an agreement between Openreach and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) so that all new build developments would be offered with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) for free, or as part of a co-funded initiative. In November 2016, Openreach announced that it would provide FTTP to all new developments with more than 30 plots for free. Virgin Media and GTC, another infrastructure provider, have similar agreements with the HBF.

My Department’s Barrier Busting Task Force are exploring how we can build on this to ensure that all residents of new build developments receive the connectivity they deserve.