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Broadband progress: frustrating! DCMS delays agreement of successful Community Fibre Partnership bids. (and programme pauses AGAIN for 8 weeks from the 14th Jan 2022)

by Jackie Porter on 12 December, 2021

I received an update on the government’s project gigabit broadband programme in Hampshire, which is being run by Building Digital UK (BDUK), part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). See below:-

We need faster , reliable broadband speeds for work, education, leisure and health

The £5bn programme seeks to ensure almost all premises in the UK can access gigabit capable broadband by 2032 and further details can be found here:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/project-gigabit-delivery-plan-summer-update

The Gigabit Voucher programme has been very popular but is quite complex and communities often require assistance from Hampshire Count Council (HCC), BDUK and suppliers such as Openreach to be able to access the funding and the level of community involved required means that some schemes do not get off the ground. To address this and speed up delivery government is launching a series of large scale procurements.

Hampshire is in Phase 1b of the procurement process which is due to start in February 2022. As part of this the government will pause new applications to the Gigabit Voucher Programme on 14 January for 8 weeks. This will enable a fixed list of premises to be included in the government-led procurement. Once the procurement has been completed the Voucher Scheme will be un-paused and premises not included in the suppliers’ proposals will be eligible for the Voucher Scheme.

Implications and outcomes for residents:

  1. The Voucher scheme is being paused to allow the procurement area to be defined – at an individual property level.
  2. Communities that do not complete a submission by the 14th January 2022 will either be included in the procurement or will be able to resume their submission after the pause period.
  3. Projects set for completion via the voucher scheme should be delivered within 12 months.
  4. Projects which do not make the cut off and are subsequently included in the procurement may take longer than 12 months to deliver, this may cause some frustration to the community involved.
  5. If a property is not included in the procurement, then it will become eligible for the voucher scheme assuming it meets the assessment criteria e.g. it is not in an area due to be upgraded via commercial investments.

Gigabit Broadband Delivery:

  1. The superfast broadband programme has upgraded 12,000 premises to gigabit capable broadband connections.

Voucher Schemes across Hampshire:

  1. Openreach has completed 44 community projects enabling more than 2,200 premises to access gigabit-capable connections.
  2. An additional 30 projects are being built which will enable a further 2,670 premises.
  3. Hampshire Broadband Company is also building a network of more than 500 premises around Baughurst, TxRx Communications have two smaller projects close to Basingstoke.
  4. Further projects are in the pipeline with BDUK, but it is not possible to quantify these currently as HCC is only notified once a project has been approved.

If you have any questions please email me and I’ll endeavour to seek an answer from our knowledgeable officers at HCC. jackie.porter@hants.gov.uk

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