Broadband Delivery UK Stretches Admin Budget Away from Rural Projects

The governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office, which is responsible for managing the £830m publicly funded roll-out of superfast broadband ISP services to reach 90% of people by spring 2015, will see just 63% of its £3.8m administration budget spent on rural projects in 2012-13 (down from 100% in 2010-11 and 94% in 2011-12).

According to Computerworld UK, the change is because BDUK has taken on additional admin responsibilities, such as the £164m Urban Broadband Fund (UBF) for expanding the coverage of “ultra-fast” broadband (80-100Mbps+) and “high speed” public wifi services into neglected areas of 22 large and smaller cities.

BDUK is also now responsible for the £150m Mobile Infrastructure Project (MIP), which aims to help “at least” 98% of UK people gain access to a Mobile Broadband service by the end of 2017.

History – BDUK Administration Budgets
2010-11 – £1 million (100% for rural projects)
2011-12 – £5.85 million (94% for rural projects)
2012-13 – £3.8 million (63% for rural projects)

Last year it was revealed that a whopping £9.8m of the office’s budget had already been spent on 70 external consultants (between May 2010 and September 2012) and the department suffered a staff turnover rate of 110% for three quarters (the rate at which an employer gains and loses employees). ISPreview.co.uk published a related list of BDUK staff roles in November last year.

In fairness most of the necessary leg work for the relevant Local Broadband Plans (LBP), which apply to each of the 50 or so related / county projects around the United Kingdom, has already been done and so it makes sense that the offices administrative resource would now start to be diverted towards its other schemes.