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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether broadband engineers may enter people's homes during the covid-19 outbreak to install fibre connections.

The telecoms sector has been one of the critical services needed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. For these purposes, the Government defined telecoms key workers to include staff working on network operations, field engineering, call centre staff, IT and data infrastructure, 999 and 111 critical services. All central guidance has been published on gov.uk

The Government guidance on staying at home and away from people clarifies that work carried out in people’s homes, including for repairs and maintenance, can continue, provided that the tradesperson is well and has no symptoms. Workers should seek to follow Public Health England advice on distancing.

The Government does not intend to prescribe which kinds of activity (network build, network repair, maintenance, consumer switching) are and are not appropriate. It is for employers to manage the health and safety of their employees responsibly at this time and ensure that the PHE guidance can be followed safely by their workforce.