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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress his Department has made on the rollout of gigabit broadband.

The Government is committed to delivering nationwide gigabit connectivity as soon as possible. Today, over two in five premises can access gigabit-capable networks, up from just one in ten in November 2019. By the end of the year, 60% will have access, and by 2025 the Government is targeting a minimum of 85% gigabit-capable coverage, working with industry to reach as close to 100% as possible.

To achieve this, the Government has enacted a number of policies to make it easier to deploy broadband networks in the UK. These include addressing the issue of unresponsive landlords holding up deployment through the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act and launching the Street Manager service with the Department for Transport to make it easier for operators to access roads for digital infrastructure deployment.

The Government is also investing £5bn as part of Project Gigabit to ensure the hardest-to-reach areas in the UK receive coverage.The first Project Gigabit areas are set to reach some one million hard to reach homes and businesses, with Phase 1a covering up to 510,000 premises, announced in March 2021. Phase 1b is expected to be confirmed in the summer and reach up to 640,000 more hard to reach homes and businesses. These are areas with a high percentage of hard to reach premises and a relatively high proportion of premises without access to superfast speeds.

Project Gigabit was designed to be flexible as it runs alongside commercial rollout. As with other market data, we will review intervention areas to ensure we target truly left-behind places. The next Project Gigabit Delivery Plan update is expected shortly.

Concurrently, premises in rural areas may also be in line for funding through the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, with up to £210m allocated to the scheme over the next four years to support hard to reach communities. Cheshire East has made good use of the scheme, seeing 338 voucher connections worth £772,487, with a further 308 vouchers to be connected, totalling £1.4 million.

Home and business owners can check the eligibility of their address and then look up suppliers in their area by going to https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/. The voucher scheme offers up to £1,500 for homes and £3,500 for businesses to help to cover the costs of installing gigabit broadband to people’s doorsteps when used as part of a group scheme.

Additionally, 4,000 premises in Cheshire will also benefit from access to gigabit capable broadband as a result of a £4.5million investment under the Superfast Broadband programme that was agreed in December 2020.