Digital infrastructure, connectivity and accessibility, 3 December 2020

• Access to fast and reliable digital connectivity is a necessity for communities and businesses and will be essential to keeping pace with global developments as we emerge from COVID-19.
• Councils’ therefore fully support the Government’s ambition of nationwide coverage of gigabit-capable broadband by 2025.  Over the last decade local government has successfully managed the local delivery of the Superfast Broadband Programme.
• It is positive that the Spending Review committed £1.2 billion of the £5 billion Gigabit Broadband programme to delivery by 2025. We wait to hear from the Government on how and when the remaining £3.8 billion will be spent over the course of the programme.
• Our major concern relating to the programme is the Government’s intention to centrally procure and manage the contracts for the local delivery of gigabit-capable broadband infrastructure, rather than councils.
• Councils have developed significant expertise and local datasets to help hold broadband providers to account on their delivery, helping achieve value for money for the taxpayer and a large number of premises that can connect to faster speeds as a result of the programme’s rollout. The Government has yet to finalise how it will best utilise this expertise in future broadband roll out.
• An infrastructure programme of this scale requiring a substantial amount of street works, land access negotiations, community engagement and other local deployment activity, will inevitably face a range of roll out challenges and potential delays. This could have significant consequences for the country and the Government’s 2025 deadline. Councils can help barrier bust these issues across local areas, but they cannot do it without support.
• We are calling on the Government to provide funding for councils to put in place a local digital champion to help coordinate delivery locally and to recruit extra capacity within highways and planning teams to respond to surges in local roll out activity, such as street works permit requests or planning applications, that take place when a provider commences roll out in a specific area.
• We have noted that the Government has revised down its target of rolling out 100 per cent gigabit-capable broadband by 2025. According to the Spending Review, the Government will now aim for a minimum of 85 per cent gigabit capable coverage, but will seek to accelerate roll-out further to get as close to 100 per cent as possible. We have previously outlined our reservations as to whether the Government’s original 100 per cent ambition was achievable by 2025.
• Councils are already supporting communities to keep in touch online such and have played a vital role to enhancing digital skills. However, with increasing financial pressure, their abilities to continue to do this will be limited.

Councils have developed significant expertise and local datasets to help hold broadband providers to account on their delivery. They have also been key to tackling local issues including:

• challenging, sense checking and optimising publicly funded interventions and broadband deployment plans using local knowledge of communities, politicians and geographies to help mitigate delays, cost escalations and local complaints 
• leveraging opportunities to accelerate deployments, reduce costs and stop unintentional overbuild 
• helping secure complex wayleaves agreements with landowners to use their land to host digital infrastructure 
• enabling street works access to 166,000 miles of local roads whilst protecting the structural integrity of the network, via inspections of works. 

There is therefore a concern amongst councils as to the potential risks of centralising the roll out of a publicly funded gigabit broadband, especially when set against the success of the councils roll out of the Superfast Broadband Programme. It is important that the Government works with councils to ensure broadband providers contracted to deliver publicly funded broadband serve those with the worst connectivity first. 

Whilst the LGA has had positive engagement with Building Digital UK (BDUK) in regard to the possible future design of the programme and welcomes their collaborative approach, we have yet to see how a centralised model would provide the benefits that a localised one would in terms of value for money and achieving “premises passed”.  

We have noted that the Government has revised down its target of rolling out 100 per cent gigabit-capable broadband by 2025. According to the Spending Review, will now aim for a minimum of 85 per cent gigabit capable coverage, but will seek to accelerate roll-out further to get as close to 100 per cent as possible. We had previously outlined our reservations as to whether the Government’s original 100 per cent ambition was achievable by 2025.

For instance, it is estimated that the total public and private investment committed to rolling out gigabit-capable broadband will reach £30 billion by 2025. This includes the £5 billion pounds committed by Government to subsidise roll out to the final 20 per cent of area and is the largest investment in the country’s digital infrastructure network to date. 

It should however be noted that an infrastructure programme of this scale requiring a substantial amount of street works, land access negotiations, community engagement and other local deployment activity, will inevitably face a range of roll out challenges and potential delays. This could have significant consequences for the country and the Government’s 2025 deadline. Recent analysis has also shown that even a 12-month delay to achieving the Government’s full coverage of gigabit-broadband ambitions could cost the UK £9.7 billion of productivity benefits.

We have called on the Government to provide funding for councils to put in place a local digital champion to help coordinate delivery locally and to recruit extra capacity within highways and planning teams to respond to surges in local roll out activity, such as street works permit requests or planning applications, that take place when a provider commences roll out in a specific area. This will be essential to avoiding local bottlenecks and the slowing down of delivery. A local digital champion would be a central contact point for Government and broadband providers to help problem solve deployment issues in the local area. It was pleasing to hear the Minister for Digital, Matt Warman, support our call for these digital champions in a recent Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee session on broadband and the road to 5G. It is still to be confirmed whether the Government will be investing significantly in these digital champions, despite highlighting the difference the programme has made to those areas where it has been rolled out.   

Councils hold key knowledge from the previous roll-out and this knowledge risks being lost unless digital champions are funded in the future. With the effects of the pandemic, many councils are under even greater financial pressure and will be unable to prioritise this work over key statutory services. This could place a significant risk on the Government’s delivery timescales. Analysis undertaken by ADEPT’s Digital Connectivity Working Group has recommended that councils have access to £200,000 of flexible grant revenue funding from Government annually until 2025 in order to fund this capacity. This would represent an annual commitment by Government of £30 million and would equate to less than 3 per cent of the £5 billion it has already committed to rolling out gigabit connectivity.  

In our On-The-Day-Briefing of the Spending Review, we responded to the Chancellor’s announcements on digital connectivity. We noted that the Government has revised down its target of rolling out 100 per cent gigabit-capable broadband by 2025. According to the Spending Review, the Government will now aim for a minimum of 85 per cent gigabit capable coverage, but will seek to accelerate roll-out further to get as close to 100 per cent as possible. We had previously outlined our reservations as to whether the Government’s original 100 per cent ambition was achievable by 2025.

Communities can only benefit from improved digital connectivity if they have the digital skills to do so. The Government should fund councils to enable them to support the digital inclusion agenda. Councils are already supporting communities to keep in touch online such as Leeds City Council which has engaged with over 200 community groups and organisations over the last two years as part of the 100 per cent Digital Leeds programme. During lockdown, the team have focused on making sure that partners had the tools to continue to connect with and support their service users to be more independent and live better lives. More information on the 100 per cent Digital Leeds response to COVID-19 is available online.