Broadband: Rural Areas

(asked on 16th July 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when he plans to publish further details on (a) how the £5 billion fund for rural roll-out will be allocated to support the roll-out of full fibre broadband and (b) what share of that funding will be allocated to Scotland.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 22nd July 2020

We are currently developing the pipeline of premises for initial deployment under the £5 billion investment into gigabit-capable broadband. To ensure these are successfully delivered, we need to consult plans with industry, Local Bodies and Devolved Administrations. We plan to publish the first draft pipeline later this year.

The £5bn programme will deliver to the hardest to reach premises in the UK. These are disproportionately situated in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland given their rurality. It is too early in our programme design process to provide figures of how much funding each region will receive from the programme. However, the funding will be allocated based on the number of eligible premises in that area, as opposed to the Barnett Formula.

Before we can confirm the share of the funding which will be allocated to Scotland we need the R100 programme, the Scottish superfast broadband programme, to complete its procurement phase so that we can determine which specific premises are in scope for R100 and therefore what remains to be done with funding from the £5bn. We are working with the Scottish Government to align our interventions.

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