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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the time taken by BT Openreach to provide for the connection of new housing developments to telephone services.

The lead times for connecting new housing developments will vary according to their location, the services being provided and the engineering difficulties that the company faces. I am aware that there have been delays in connecting some new developments and that Openreach has been recruiting additional staff to help address this problem. The Government recently published its Utilities Guide setting out performance standards for new utility connections. The guide includes for the first time performance standards for telecoms and broadband connections to new builds. This will allow the performance of communications infrastructure providers to be monitored. We will also be exploring with housebuilders and communications infrastructure providers the scope for making further improvements to connection lead times.