Norfolk County Council Issues Update After CityFibre Scale-Back Fibre Broadband Build

The Norfolk County Council (NCC) in England has published a new document, which reveals the future plan for gigabit broadband deployments after CityFibre scaled-back their contracted roll-out of full fibre infrastructure under the UK government’s Project Gigabit scheme in May 2026. As expected, Openreach (BT) look set to pick up the slack.

In case anybody has forgotten, CityFibre announced in the spring that their Project Gigabit contracts had all been “re-scoped in response to the accelerated rollout of commercially funded full fibre across Project Gigabit areas“ (here). In practice this meant that the operator’s original £114.2m contract for Norfolk, which aimed to cover 62,200 hard-to-reach premises, was reduced to £61.9m and would only cover around 33,000 premises.

However, CityFibre’s excuse later turned out to be only partly true, as the operator’s change had also left plenty of premises in poorly served areas with no alternative plans for future gigabit connectivity (here). At the time we speculated that the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) directorate would attempt to tackle this by moving such premises into one of Openreach’s larger Type C (Cross-Regional) contracts under Project Gigabit. No other suppliers tackle Type C and this is precisely the sort of situation that such contracts exist to help tackle (examples here, here, here and here).

The NCC are currently due to discuss this situation, as well as other digital matters, at a meeting of their Infrastructure and Development Select Committee on Thursday next week (credits to David for the tip). As part of that the committee published an agenda document, which appears to confirm what’s going to happen with the bits that CityFibre will now fail to reach in Norfolk.

Norfolk’s Project Gigabit Plan

Project Gigabit in Norfolk was originally structured as a six-drawdown programme funded by BDUK and delivered by CityFibre. The original contract was expected to deliver gigabit capable broadband to around 66,000 premises with £114 million of inward investment. Following the planning of the first two drawdowns, the planned scope increased to around 80,000 premises and £128 million of inward investment. However, in May 2026 it was confirmed that CityFibre will now only continue with drawdowns 1 and 2, reducing the CityFibre build scope to around 32,000 premises. Drawdown 1 and 2 includes premises to the north of Norwich and the east of the county.

The premises removed from drawdowns 3 to 6 are not being abandoned. Where they remain eligible for public subsidy, they are expected to be moved into a new Project Gigabit Type C procurement. This route will allow Openreach and other eligible suppliers to bid to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to the affected areas.

This includes plans for the inclusion of additional premises in the west and northwest of the county. Plans for these are now well advanced, with around 11,000 additional premises now in the advanced planning stage. We anticipate approval of the build to these 11,000 premises in August.

Project Gigabit in Norfolk remains active and continues to support the Government’s ambition for 99% gigabit-capable coverage by 2032. Although CityFibre will now only build drawdowns 1 and 2, the premises removed from drawdowns 3 to 6 will be considered through the new Type C procurement, with a contract expected to be awarded late in 2026/early 2027. This will allow Openreach and other suppliers to bid for the remaining eligible areas, helping to ensure that the hardest-to-reach premises in Norfolk remain part of the national completion strategy.

The reference to “other eligible suppliers” above appears to be incorrect, since we’re not aware of any other suppliers under the Framework (other than Openreach) that are eligible to bid on Type C contracts. We should point out that the situation in Norfolk is widely expected to be mirrored across the other counties impacted by CityFibre’s earlier decision.

In an entirely separate development, the same document reveals that NCC’s funding to provide fast Wi-Fi to the public in very hard to reach rural locations using Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, which managed to provide connectivity to ten rural village halls in Norfolk, has now come to an end. “Funding for this project has now ended [and] the service will be removed at the end of December 2026,” said the report.

However, the council said that any village halls impacted by this decision would still be able to use the installed satellite antennas should they wish to continue the service, albeit no doubt only if they’re willing to fund the underlying service themselves.

The document also noted that superfast broadband (30Mbps+) coverage of Norfolk has increased from 42% in 2012 to over 97.5% today and gigabit capable (1000Mbps+) coverage has increased to over 80% today from 75% just over a year ago.