Funding Hiccup Strikes Lincolnshire’s Broadband Rollout Project

The Onlincolnshire project in the East Midlands of England, which is currently working with BT to roll-out FTTC/P based “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) services to “at least” 89% of all premises in the county by April 2016, appears to have briefly hit a snag with a small EU funding shortfall.

The original £48 million project, which focused on an intervention area of 150,000 homes and businesses where the private sector had failed to invest in faster broadband (so far 80,000 of that have already been upgraded), was based on an allocation of £11.2m from the county council, £4m from the district authorities, £14.3m from national government and £18.8m from BT.

As part of this the borough councils also made a contribution of £300,000 and this was due to be supported by some investment from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), which would have taken the total to £344,310. Unfortunately funding from the ERDF, which is worth £44,310, “has not been forthcoming” and as such the borough councils have been asked to plug the hole by harnessing underspend from the council’s capital budget.

Council Meeting Statement (29th April 2015)

Unfortunately additional ERDF funding applications have only been successful on the proviso that the monies are not invested in broadband infrastructure, and so the full 8.6% share of the infrastructure upgrade (£344,310) has now been requested from the Borough Council.

The good news is that Boston Borough Council has voted in favour of plugging the hole. At the same time a Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract has also recently entered the procurement phase, which means that before too long we should be seeing an extended contract that pushes the coverage to 95% by around 2017/18 (most likely working with BT). But that too will require millions more in public funding.

Funnily enough the ERDF were still happy to contribute £300k to the roll-out of a faster wireless broadband network by ABInternet, although this funding could only be spent on broadband in parts of East Lindsey and Boston (here).